"Gracie" original artwork by Ann Kruse
The young man watched as the gravediggers slowly lowered the plain wooden box into the damp earth. His two brothers stood with their heads together having forgotten their late father, their younger brother and the solemn occasion that had them shivering in the rain. Marcus, the oldest, looked confident and smug. His next meal was already simmering in the large kitchen under the millhouse. Titus, the middle brother, earnestly whispered into his elder sibling’s ear. The two young men were marrying their assets–the mill and the mule. But where did that leave Quintus, the youngest son and the heir to the family cat–a scrawny thing that Quint could see peeking from a pile of leaves near his mother’s weathered gravestone. As he eyed the cat he thought, “that bag of bones won’t even make one decent meal. His fur won’t be enough for a pair of mittens. How shall I ever survive?” (Inspired by the story “Puss in Boots” by Charles Perrault.)
One winter morning when I was old enough to know better, I crawled out of bed, packed up my car and ran away from home. Or to be more precise, home had run away from me and I was just surrendering the field. My sons had grown, my husband had decamped and my parents had succumb to age and illness. My only companions in the old white house were the family cat and the silence as large and worrisome as a hibernating bear. At this point in the story, I wish I could say I joined the circus or moved to Florence, but instead I took the same road that dispossessed women have been traveling for centuries…I got myself to a nunnery. Or the closest Protestant equivalent–I enrolled in seminary. Now almost seven years later, I look at the experience and wonder. Had I joined the circus, today I might have a bitchin’ tattoo and the ability to walk the highwire. Had I moved to Florence, my Italian would be perfect and my artwork would be suffused with the light only found under a Mediterranean sun. What I carried away from seminary is much harder to identify and almost impossible to articulate.
Running away when life grows too much to bear is an act so human it has become cliché. When life gets tough, the not-so-tough hit the road. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty closed their eyes on a world beyond their capacity to cope. Dorothy flew off to Oz and Jonah jumped on the first boat headed out of town. When faced with hardship, the youngest son in “Puss in Boots” threw up his hands and let his cat accomplish what he was too timid to even try. But willing and able heroes arrive armed with double-edged swords. Though the miller’s cat delivered wealth, a castle and a bride, the young man’s desires for his future are never considered. With his confidence battered and the thought of what comes next more than he could face, the youngest son let a cat decide his fate.
Rescue seems like a blessing when we are hurt and lost. And we are never more hopeful for a knight in shining armor, or a cat in leather boots, than when we are facing difficult choices. But ceding our right to choose often leaves us resentful and our hero becomes our scapegoat. When I settled into my tiny apartment at seminary, I was hoping I had found a safe space, where people wiser than myself would fix all my broken pieces. It turns out I only got half of what I was hoping for, but I’m starting to believe I got the best half. Sometimes, a place apart is all we need to be able to find the hero hidden within. In that safe, still place, the part of us that needs to heal can heal and the part that is as valiant and resourceful as the miller’s cat can start to plan for the future.
(Disclaimer: First, let me say that seminary and tattoos are not mutually exclusive. I know plenty of ministers, seminarians and theologians who sport some pretty righteous body art. And second, not once…even when life was at its bleakest…did I ever consider throwing the family cat into the stew pot.)
Being Dorothy 