Stuck

Background art for Sleeping Beauty by Eyvind Earle, 1959.

What the nanny saw–What can I tell you about that day?  More than a hundred years have passed and I am an old woman. Memory is no longer my handmaid, but I will draw her into service if first you speak plainly to me. Tell me true, have I grown old in marrow and bone as my mother and grandmother before me?  I was in my prime and sprightly when Princess Aurora discovered the spinning wheel and sent us to our slumbers.  Now a crone scowls at me from the mirror, but I did not live those years.  I did not live. The princess awoke bursting with life as ripe as a summer peach, but those who shared her sleep bend like ancient willows and fade like autumn roses. Are we old before our time or are we living beyond our years?  It is a puzzle that tests my wits, but I can find no answer.

Illustration for Sleeping Beauty by Liz Wong

My sorrows aside now, let me tell you about that day. The princess was a beauty and sweet.  But never more sweet than when webs were spinning behind her green eyes. It seemed she knew, even from a child, that only the merry and fulsome paraded past her window—that the light and laughter hid darkness and tears. In the scullery, they counted on her kindness and the gifts she would tuck among the dinner plates for those with miseries at home. How she guessed the truth of grieving widows and hungry tots, I cannot avow, but maids gossip on staircases and footmen whisper in halls.  Perhaps she had been seeking the spindle all her days.

She awoke that morning quiet and mournful, with eyes that would not meet my own.  “Why so glum, Your Highness?” I asked her. “Whatever your worry, tis not the end of the world.”  But, in truth, it was.  She had long been at her lessons when the tutor, a dozy, old sot, awoke from a nap to find her vanished from her writing desk.  All in a flurry, stable boys and chamberlains, parlor maids and almoners flew through the palace calling out her name. The queen, in her bedroom, wept. I cannot speak to the tales of an old woman waiting at the wheel, for that is not what I saw.  In that last heartbeat before we tumbled into darkness, I threw open the door at the top of the tower and I saw Princess Aurora, her hand upon the spindle, smiling at her finger, pricked and beaded with blood.  Inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale “Little Briar Rose”.

I’m stuck!  Without benefit of burning bush or fiery wheel, this lunchtime epiphany smacked me right between the eyes, leaving me open-mouthed and staring at my last bite of salad. Salad–my standard weekday lunch–my default when I can think of nothing else to eat. Amid the chaos, salad has been a mainstay, an easy choice, a bulwark in the face of confusion.  I read somewhere that Einstein always wore sweaters, so he didn’t have to waste his time on choices sartorial.  Salads are my culinary equivalent.  But as I considered the lettuce, dangling from my fork like a limp and oily banner, I realized I had fallen into a rut, perpetually standing at the salad bar while around me the pastas and the panini; the goulashes and the gyros languished untouched.

This is not what I expected.  How could I be stuck?  Map the last eight years of my life and you’ll witness my pinball progression.  Four moves, three jobs, one divorce and a graduate degree, stuck is the last thing I should be.  But there it was staring me in the face and dripping Italian dressing on my spreadsheets. To my surprise, realizing my state came as a relief.  For what is stuck, can be unstuck.  In fact therein lies the stuff of great literature.  Stories, the really good ones–whether fiction or fact–are about people trading in their Velcro for Teflon.  I can do that.  You can do that.  It only takes a shift in perspective.

I’ll allow that shifting a viewpoint isn’t always as easy as picking a burger over a bowl of lettuce.  Sometimes it takes a jolt to the system like Dorothy’s tornado or Jonah’s great fish or sticking your finger on a spindle to make you see that the safe cocoon you’ve wrapped around your life has grown too small.  Sleeping Beauty could have chosen to turn away when she came upon the chance to learn something new, something that was not part of her limited and artificial world.  It is so easy to opt for what feels safe, when the great universe beyond the edge of your knowledge and experience rises up so huge and scary.  And once you chosen the new over the known, it’s natural to take time to process, to sleep on it as the house spins and the sea roars and the vines grow up around the castle walls.  But when we’re rested and ready, when we square our shoulders and step up to the edge, we realize that this is what life is all about, seeking the whats and the what ifs and, most importantly, sharing what we learn along the way.

(The video included here by The Avett Brothers is wonderful, except for the first 50 seconds or so, which is kind of lame.  But if you stick it out, I guarantee, you’ll be glad you did.  Trust me!)