There’s No Place Like Home

It had become a habit, gazing across the plain. For hours she would stand willing her eyes to see what she most hoped to find, a figure running to her out of the prairie’s haze, that foolish little dog scampering at her side. Emily, always so driven by farm work and duty, had lost all sense of purpose.  The twister had swept it away along with the child. But time passes and the damage is set aright, at least the damage you can see. The farmhouse and the chicken coop stood repaired finer than new and for Em, almost by magic, because it had happened around her as she waited and watched the desolate landscape. If only she could change the things she had said. If only she had been mindful of what was truly important. Then Dorothy would still be filling the empty spaces with her laughter and this place, where Em had come as a bride and toiled away her youth, would still feel like home. Inspired by “The Wizard of Oz—Chapters 23 & 24”, by L. Frank Baum.

Thoughts of home collect like frost on the window panes this time of year. And though I try to keep my eyes focused on the here and now, the patterns and swirls of Decembers long past fill my vision, leaving me peering at the present through a veil of memories. Here shivers an angel in the nativity play clothed in a threadbare white gown and a prickly halo, breathing in the aromas of popcorn and cedar. There lingers an adolescent staring into the velvety darkness of a too silent night, the Christmas tree and her face reflected on the cold glass. Up in the corner a teenager smooths her party dress as she waits for the current love of her life. Near the sill a young mother kneels amid a pile of crumpled paper, smashed bows and two giggling boys. And everywhere the faces of loved ones, smiling or stern, appear briefly in the rime before the warmth of my breath melts them away.

The holidays for me, as for many, are bittersweet. Each year I find myself struggling to reconcile the memories that comfort me with those that still cause me pain. How is it, I wonder, that I repeatedly come to the same conflicted state, wanting to dive into the festivities with both feet, but afraid of what such an immersion might mean. And as I fret about dipping my toe in the seasonal tide, a great wave of melancholy washes over me, leaving me struggling to stay afloat and I suspect that the recollections I cling to for salvation are the same remembrances that are pulling me down. As counterintuitive as it may seem, I sense now is the moment to let them go. For in my desire to recreate home in the image of my past experiences, I fail to appreciate the home that is already here. How lucky that this year a simple moment of shared joy reminded me of the beauty of the place where I am.

There comes that time at Thanksgiving dinner when the plates are empty and the cutlery lays silent and those gathered at the table bask in that pause before dessert. Into this quiet I reminisced about my mother’s dinners and admitted that next to her gold standard of holiday meals mine felt a little like pyrite. My family offered me assurances about my cooking and the meal we had just enjoyed, even though I wondered if the words reflected their love and kindness more than the quality of the food. It seemed the perfect moment for dessert and my son presented his three-year-old daughter with her first ever slice of pumpkin pie. To say she was transported by the experience would not be an overstatement. She squealed with her first bite and relished each bite after with an enthusiasm that delighted the rest of us. See, my children told me, here is someone who will remember her grandmother’s dinners as being the ultimate of holiday dining.

So this Christmas when the memories, good and bad, started flooding back, I tried to welcome them, but not let them dictate my expectations for the season. Just as Dorothy will return to a new farmhouse and Auntie Em will welcome back a child made new by her experiences, we have to honor what was, but embrace what is. As the movie-Dorothy reminds us, “There’s no place like home.” For home never exists in the past, but always in the present. It is that place you cannot map for it resides in the heart and though it might spend years in close association with one set of walls, or one kind of holiday, it is sure to travel, to migrate, to change in ways we cannot imagine, but its appearance will surprise us when we least expect it and we will find that home is always waiting right where we are.

Wishing you blessings and joy in the coming New Year!

If You Go Out In The Woods Today

Leaves. The lion hated leaves. He hated their color and their smell. He hated how they tangled in his mane and crunched beneath his feet. He hated their sheer numbers. For as new leaves sprouted on the ancient trees, their old dead ancestors piled up on the forest floor. But most of all the lion hated their voracious appetites. On sunny days, the leaves overhead gobbled up every ray and beam until all that was left to brighten the glade were sickly, green leftovers that drifted down from the canopy’s feast. And on rainy days the leaves that blanketed the ground sucked in every drop and splash, so to quench his thirst, the royal cat was forced to lick the faces and backsides of his detested foes. The lion and the leaves were at war and the leaves were winning. To escape, the lion knew he would have to leave the forest. He would have to venture out into the world, friendless and frightened. And for that, he needed a miracle. Something or someone so extraordinary that he could dust off his battered bravery and step into sunlight untainted by leaves.  Inspired by “The Wizard of Oz, Chapter 6 The Cowardly Lion” by L. Frank Baum

I’ve wasted a lot of time being miserable and a lot of energy trying to mend what is hopelessly broken. I’ve squandered years on people who devalue me and bartered away joy for security and acceptance. And even in the realization that my current situation is no longer healthy, no longer feeding my spirit and my soul, my first instinct is to find the fault in myself, believing if I fill up my gaps the rest of my life will fall into place. If only it were that simple.

Empires have been built on self-help schemes that claim getting fit, getting happy and getting rich is only a credit card transaction away. Gurus of every persuasion play on our self-doubts to convince us the good life is as effortless as an attitude adjustment. And even those closest to us smile from the midst of their own challenges and ask, “Have you X-ed?  Have you Y-ed?  Have you Z-ed?”, needing our answer to be “Oh, yes.  All is well. You needn’t worry about me anymore.” And in our heart of hearts, we want easy answers. We want the path to be painless. We want to make lemonade out of the lemons dumped on our doorsteps. But sometimes our life-lemons are so rotten and pulpy that even our best attempts will never produce something sweet. And there comes a day when we have to acknowledge that no amount of tinkering with the recipe is going to fix the bitterness and on that day we have to be brave enough to dump the whole batch.    

Dorothy’s friends in Oz each believed they had a gap to fill, that somehow a vital piece of their make-up had been omitted and, as a result, their lives were meaningless. As privileged observers, we watch the film or read the book and we know the Scarecrow is smart, the Tinman is loving and the Cowardly Lion is really quite brave. But we fail to see those truths when we consider ourselves. To share the grandstand in the Emerald City with the heroes of Oz, we too must leave the cornfield and the forest; we must let our rusted parts be oiled and flexed back into usefulness; and we must accept the possibility of distractions like witches and flying monkeys.

Oz is everywhere and none of us travels the yellow brick road alone. Out of those moments of despair, we have to remind ourselves that wisdom, love and courage have brought us this far and are waiting, even now, for the next call to action. We just have to remember to be brave.

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!)

 

Shoeless

Where had she lost the shoes?  Dorothy rubbed the dust out of her eyes and considered the riddle of her stockinged feet.  Moments before she had hit the ground like a pint-sized meteor, tumbling head over heels through the buffalo grass and startling the grasshoppers into spontaneous acrobatics.  Pushing herself upright, she wondered what else was lost?  The basket, packed tight with her second best dress and the Munchkins’ farewell gifts, no longer hung on her arm.  And where was Toto? Was he already chasing Auntie Em’s chickens through the barnyard or was he wandering the desert that divided Oz and the civilized world? “Toto?” Perhaps some unused magic still clung to the cotton of her stockings and if she closed her eyes and tapped her heels, it would carry her little dog the rest of the way home.  But before she could try, the weeds rustled and parted and with a yip Toto hopped into her lap. Like Dorothy he seemed surprised by her shoeless state.  So much had depended on those silver slippers and they would have been an uncommon comfort in a land without magic. Overhead crows cawed in a cloudless sky and a feeble breeze tickled her nose with the scent of hot earth and cowpies.  “Toto,” she sighed, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Oz anymore.”  Inspired by L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz—Chapter XXIII

Dorothy Gale at sixty–my imagination flares and I see her standing in her garden at the end of the day, a figure so real she is more memory than fantasy.  Her cotton dress is faded from sun and countless washings.  Her loosely bound hair is threaded with silver.  On her feet she wears broken down boots, cracked at the heel and scuffed at the toe,  their color as gray as prairie dust. Purchased at a store in Kansas City, they were Uncle Henry’s final pair.  Dorothy knows they belong on the trash pile, but to her they are more than boots and she suspects they will be sitting in their place by the backdoor long after the wind has swept her footsteps away. Though the hard life of a Kansas homestead is etched on her face, Dorothy’s eyes still hold the wonder of a world beyond the rainbow.

Not long ago a friend asked me how I felt now that I was “really sixty”.  I sputtered about looking for an answer, searching to see if I could put a finger on my newly attained sixty-ness, but at that spot in my psyche that is essentially me, sixty hadn’t settled in.  Or maybe I had barred the door and refused it admittance.  This same friend turned sixty last April and she had faced the milestone head-on with a house full of celebrants and presents piled on her hearthstone.  But as my birthday neared, I became a master at deflecting invitations to celebrate, burying that small, hard seed of discomfort about my age ever deeper under a compost heap of denial.  Inevitably, by the time my birthday arrived I was sick, my subconscious opting for a viral infection rather than dealing with the transition out of my fifties.

If my parents were alive, they would be telling me to suck it up and get on with the business at hand.  Stoicism had been burned into their DNA by uncounted generations of Celts (mother’s side) and Vikings (father’s). It doesn’t take much to imagine my ancestors blowing raspberries at me from over the centuries.  After all, turning a year older is the work of only a moment.  As my mother always said of her own birthdays, it’s just another day.  But this year, it felt like I had arrived at the edge of a chasm and contemplating the crossing had me in despair.  What waits on the other side?

Original illustration by W.W. Denslow.

Until I reached my fifties, my life had progressed in a fairly predictable fashion.  The cultural footwear I had been fitted with at birth worked well for the standard set of heartbreaks and joys I’d encountered along my way, but they’d also adapted to the side-trips that were uniquely my own. By fifty-five, I had a reasonable, though sometimes disquieting, expectation that the rest of my life would progress not unlike my parents’ or my grandparents’.  But then everything changed. A friend of mine from Kenya recently described his community’s struggles as “a bit of hell over here” and with these simple words he elegantly captured those long periods of loss that every group, every individual, must face.  But the journey forward after we’ve survived our “bit of hell” also has its challenges.  When we return to solid ground, unshod and footsore, we realize that our before-maps no longer fit our after-topography.  Personally, to put paid to my fifties meant I had to regroup and face the years ahead without signposts or OnStar or even a yellow brick road. It seems we never stop coming-of-age.

In her memoir “Wild”, Cheryl Strayed describes the loss of one of her hiking boots off the side of a mountain on the Pacific Crest Trail.  In a moment of stark and breathtaking realization that this most precious of objects is irretrievable, she pitches its mate into the trees and stands on the trail shoeless.  Reading this, I panicked.  I panicked for Cheryl, I panicked for Dorothy and I panicked for myself. How do you take the next step when there is nothing to protect your dear and tender toes?

When Moses went tending his sheep and stumbled on the burning bush, the Lord told him to take off the shoes from his feet, because the place where he stood was holy ground (Exodus 3:5).  With nothing separating his skin and the earth, Moses was at his most vulnerable.  Vulnerability is uncomfortable and frightening and we spend our whole lives trying to escape the feeling of exposure that comes when you realize there is nothing between you and the rock-strewn unpredictability of Life.  So at sixty I stand barefoot, reminding myself to appreciate the significance of each step along the shadowed path ahead and to cherish every grain of sand, every muddy patch, and every sacred stone.

I Need A Hero

"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.)

The Second Day

Kansas prairie, the second day. She opened her eyes on a room with buckled floorboards.  Her bed canted slightly to the left.  But even before the first hint of dawn crept through the broken window, before the rooster crowed from the top of the fence post, Dorothy knew she was truly and safely home.  There had been a moment at bedtime, after Aunt Em had kissed her goodnight and she had pulled the quilt up to her chin, when she hesitated before settling down to sleep.  Was it fear or anticipation that kept her eyes wide open and staring into the shadowy corners of her room?  Was there a chance she would awaken, not in the farmhouse on the flat Kansas prairie, but back among the lush green hills and gnarled apple trees of Oz?  For Dorothy, the adventure beyond the rainbow had changed her.  She had defied a witch and earned the respect of a wizard.  She had negotiated the dangers and beauties of an alien landscape and returned home with a deeper understanding of herself and her world.  For Dorothy Gale life would never be the same.  (Inspired by MGM movie version of the The Wizard of Oz.)

Twisters sweep through everyone’s lives.  Only a lucky few will never have to face the whirlwind.  Having experienced life among the rubble, I’m familiar with the stages of grief and the development of coping skills.  Recently it struck me that if you look at The Wizard of Oz from just the right perspective you find a fitting guidebook to the healing process, especially to the people you’ll meet along the way.  The devastation and disorientation that comes after a personal loss send us outside of the familiar and leave us struggling to find our way back home.  Like Dorothy, we wander, “a stranger in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22, KJV) .  If we’re lucky, we will have companions on the journey to comfort and protect us.  If we’re wise, we will let the long road back teach us the lessons we need to learn.  Returning to what is left of our daily lives after surviving Oz, we have to assimilate the twister experience into everything that comes after.

When the wind dies down and the debris settles back to earth–when we are left standing alone with nothing but what we can hold in our arms, our first instinct is to look for a friendly face, a comforter, a guide.  In the MGM movie, Dorothy’s first guide was Glinda, the good witch who appears right after the twister drops the farmhouse in Oz.  Dorothy must have hoped Glinda was the cavalry riding to the rescue in a golden bubble.  My own Glinda didn’t travel in a bubble or even balance her hat upon her nose, as the Witch of the North did in Baum’s book.  In fact my Glinda was a guy, but even without the magic wand, he seemed heaven-sent.   Here was someone who would know all the answers; who would tell me how to make everything right.  But over time I learned that Glindas don’t possess any special magic.  There are no free bubble rides here.  Unlike Cinderella’s fairy godmother, whose assistance is an act of grace, Glinda makes you work for your salvation.  With hints and serene smiles, she (or he) suggests there might be dangers on the road ahead and gives you shoes inappropriate to the walk.  Glindas mean well and they can be charming, but avoid expecting too much from them. 

As Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, she gathers the perfect escort for a road trip to the Emerald City.  These guys didn’t have many practical skills and they had no means to send the little girl home to Aunt Em, but in loyalty and humor they were unmatched.  When the way is rough, the best kind of friends are those who offer you wisdom without imposing their vision; who listen to your pain without making judgments; and who brave your anger even when they know its misplaced.  These are the people who keep us moving forward step by hesitant step.  And every wanderer should have a Toto, ready to defend us at the first whiff of sulfur, while loving us unconditionally every step of the way.  When we are locked in a tower composed of our own grief and fear, these are the friends who will outwit the guards and storm the castle. 

Finally, the most dangerous encounter along the journey is not the Flying Monkeys or even the Wicked Witch.  The greatest threat to our safe return home is a wizard with big ideas.  Wizards are never what they seem.  These purveyors of flim flam tend to take on the mantle of a higher authority, grabbing sure-fire solutions to our problems from a grab bag of half-baked ideas.  Unlike Glinda, a wizard will be eager to sell us an itinerary that suits their designs rather than our needs.  My advice when dealing with wizards is to look behind the curtain.  What you may find is a very good person, but a very bad friend.    

My hope is that you never have to spend time beyond the rainbow—that the storms in your life never grow larger than a prairie dust devil.  But if the whirlwind comes, pick your companions well and give yourself time.  To paraphrase another familiar hero at the end of his “Oz” experience, “what I had only heard about, now I have seen” (Job 42:5).  Job survived his cyclone with a new understanding.  It is not consolation for what we have lost, but a sense of peace for moving ahead.

Witches

Saturday morning.  Five o’clock.  Outside thunder rolls through the valley where I live and lightening flickers beyond the draped windows.  A morning meant for staying in bed and letting the weather have its way with the world, but how can I sleep when the storm has filled my thoughts with witches–hags of the Halloween variety; evil queens of the Disney sort; and the witches of Oz, both good and bad.  The climatic light show this morning seems especially suited to the royally wicked stepmother of Snow White.  In Disney’s 1937 animated movie, crashing thunder and flashing lightening power her violent transformation from sorceress to hag.  Later, the raging storm returns to stage-craft her dramatic demise at the end.  The weather was not this woman’s friend.

Time was her enemy as well.  Though unnamed and invisible, time plays no less a part in this story than the huntsman or the prince.  It is time the queen wants to control when she plots to eliminate the competition. How ironic that to accomplish the death of Snow White, she transforms herself into the one thing she is desperately trying to avoid becoming–an old woman.  Reaching into her own past and out of Snow White’s future, the queen takes on the form of a crone and offers the poisoned apple to the princess.  You can almost hear her thinking as the girl bites into the sweet but deadly fruit, I once looked like you.  Live long enough and one day you will look like me.

Can it really be her status of unequaled beauty the stepmother is trying to protect or is it the power that comes with beauty?  Witches are only sometimes about looks, but they are always about power.  A witch may be gorgeous like Glinda.  Or she may have green skin and warts, but what they all have in common is power–over the elements; over their minions; and, most frightening of all, over us.  MGM’s Wicked Witch of the West was unlovely and unloved, but she reveled in the fear she saw on the face of her victims.  No magic mirrors hung on the walls of her castle, but soldiers and winged monkeys waited on her every command.  On the death of her sister, the Witch of the West was all about consolidating power and annexing Munchkinland. 

Macbeth and Banquo encounter three witches.

So what draws us to these practitioners of all things magical?  Why have they haunted literature and the arts since ancient times? Witches and wizards still abound in our movies, television and books.  When we feel helpless, the power of witchcraft appeals to us most.  Being able to solve our problems with the flick of a wand or the twitch of a nose is an enviable skill, until we remember that witches quite often come to a bad end.  The evil queen and the Wicked Witch of the West were both unseated by apparently powerless girls.  But girls with time on their side.  Snow White and Dorothy survive the loss of their familiar lives by facing their futures one moment at a time, one step at a time, until they wake up to new beginnings.  At the end of their respective stories, the princess and the girl from Kansas look on their familiar landscapes with new perspectives.  They are now survivors and survival confers a special kind of power.  Once you have faced a night in the forest, whatever the day brings is never quite so scary again.