Her backstory intrigues me. The innocence and beauty of her
childhood diary haunt me each time that I read it.
While I claim in jest to be related to Santa Claus, her
claim to be the illegitimate daughter of Prince Henri Orleans of France bears too many
inexplicable coincidences to be tossed heedlessly aside. In the controversy
that arises like a dust devil around her history and sometimes threatens to
smother its spirit, there is no disputing her genius. While the veil of inauthenticity shrouds her claims of a heredity that cannot be ascertained because
the veil of death shrouds the faces of all those who know the truth, there is
no hiding the truth in the transcending beauty of her simple observations.
 |
| Opal Whiteley |
Today the grandpa dug
potatoes in the field.
I followed along
after.
I picked them up and
piled them in piles.
Some of them were very
plump.
And all the time I was
picking up potatoes
I did have
conversations with them.
To some potatoes I did
tell about
my hospital in the
near woods
and all the little
folk in it
and how much prayers
and songs
and mentholatum helps
them to have well feels.
To other potatoes I
did talk about my friends—
how the crow, Lars
Porsena,
does have a fondness
for collecting things,
how Aphrodite, the
mother pig has a fondness
for chocolate creams,
how my dear pig, Peter
Paul Rubens, wears a
little bell coming to
my cathedral service.
Potatoes are very
interesting folks.
I think they must see
a lot
of what is going on in
the earth.
They have so many
eyes.
Too, I did have thinks
of all their growing
days
there in the ground,
and all the things
they did hear.
And after, I did count
the eyes
that every potato did
have,
and their numbers were
in blessings.
I have thinks these
potatoes growing here
did have knowings of
star songs.
I have kept watch in
the field at night
and I have seen the
stars
look kindness down
upon them.
And I have walked
between the rows of potatoes
and I have watched
the star gleams on
their leaves.
At 5 to 6 years old, Opal wrote these words with crayon on
paper bags, wrapping paper and the backs of envelopes, all that was available
to her in the Oregon lumber camps in which she lived. She was a self-taught naturalist, geologist and poet…and perhaps, she was even a princess.
If you haven’t already done so, I hope you will read Opal, The Journal of an Understanding Heart. And I hope you will love it as I do.
I've always been a sucker for stories of lost princesses such as Anastasia. I've never heard of Opal or her book and it's hard to imagine a girl as young as she was writing so beautifully of potatoes and pigs and mentholat__. (spell check won't let me keep the "um" in that last word, but my grandfather thought it healed every ill,)
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of her until I read this. I will have to look her up. Her words make pictures in my mind, and I could read so many more of them.
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