Tale From an Obsolete World

 

Future Golden Remains

     

     I am an avid admirer of the artwork of Jeannie Lynn Paske's Obsolete World. I have loved fantasy and fairytales for as long as I can remember and the stories I feel taking shape around the edges of her paintings haunt me.

     I bought a box of her notecards a year ago to use for my grandchildren’s birthdays and began writing snippets of stories for each occasion to match the artwork on the card and the character of the celebrated child. This week I wrote one for our oldest granddaughter who is growing up so fast I want to catch her by the shirttail to slow her down.

Silent For A Time

     Sofeea is an Elemental. She has long arms and lean legs like the gangly roots and spindly limbs of willow trees. She is so slight that a puff of wind could blow her into tomorrow. Sometimes her friends laugh and call her Twiggy.

     But when Twiggy turns cartwheels—hand over hand, heels in the sky—then those long spindly legs weave the wind into lace as delicate as snowflakes, and those gangly arms float her body like bubbles of light over the uneven ground.

     It makes her friends laugh; but they are not laughing at Twiggy. They are not laughing at anything funny, silly or absurd. They are laughing because those wind-weaving, light-gliding cartwheels that Twiggy makes are painting joyfuls in their hearts—all the brush-stroked, chalk-smudged, crayon-bright, rainbow-edged colors of joy.

     That is what they love most about Sofeea: the nimble-footed joyfuls that twirl inside her like a cartwheel and make them laugh.

     And that is what we love most about our Girlybird.

artwork by Jeannie Lynn Paske

No Man is an Island

     I stayed last week in my sister’s lakeside cottage down the hill from her house. The cozy four-room cottage was built in the 1940’s from lumber salvaged from Galloping Gertie and is furnished with many things salvaged from our childhood home.  Some mornings I awoke to sweet October sunlight and sat at my parent’s old black and yellow dinette set eating toast and jam. I could see across the rippled water, past the island in the middle of the lake to the honey-colored maples lining the opposite shore. I stepped out onto the chilly porch with my steaming mug of tea to listen to the chatter of birds and watch the college crews practicing for Sunday’s regatta.

     But most mornings were swamped with fog and I could see no further than the restless edge of the lake. Heavy-cloaked cloud-wraiths haunted the sober shores and shrouded the island. Quicksilver sketched the lacework of spider’s webs outside my windows and dripped from the eaves. I thought about the handful of island commuters and wondered how they would find a way over the water through the webs of fog to the boat launch. On those days the cottage felt lonely, and I would slog my way up the hill through the wet grass to eat breakfast with my sister and her dog. Then, nearly every day from breakfast until dinner, we washed, ironed, dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed and polished the rooms in her house. After caring for our parents and her father-in-law, who all passed away in less than a year, she had fallen behind—the kind of behind that feels like an insurmountable burden.

     My older sister is a capable woman—we often call her the queen—but she was wise and weary enough to accept help. She has helped so many others, including me, it was simply her turn.

     That island floating outside her front windows in calm or cloudy weather reminded me of an excerpt from a poem by John Donne:

No man is an island,


Entire of itself,


Every man is a piece of the continent,


A part of the main.

     In our case the continent is family. However imperfectly, we look out for one another. We care for one another. We believe that we were Providentially placed together and are willing to put aside our own interests in order to serve one another. It isn’t a duty. It isn’t a burden. It is the purest kind of love.

     I realize that not all families function this way, that there are lonely, desert-island souls who are fortressed and steel-plated against the pain in relationships; but that only makes ours the more precious, a treasure that shouldn’t be squandered.

For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands…

(Or, scrub stovetops with one’s hands)

                                                     ~ mostly Christina Rossetti ~

On the Menu

     My husband used to be a picky eater. Fifteen years after we were married he confessed to me that for the first ten years he swallowed peas whole when I served them so that he wouldn’t have to taste them. Then one day he took the bold step and chewed them. He discovered that he liked peas after all. I remember the time when he wouldn't finish using a jar of raspberry jam because he found a bristle in it. However, he has now become markedly more adventurous than I am. His profession takes him all over the globe and he eats what is put before him because it would be terribly rude to do otherwise. Among other delicacies he has eaten duck's egg embryo, chicken feet and intestines, crocodile, tapir, dog, turtle, octopus, grasshoppers and the occasional unidentifiable mass.

     He called me from Sulawesi a few weeks ago to tell me about the dish he was served that he had never eaten before: bat...bat baked with vegetables and served casually with rice. The head and wings were included. I asked him what it tasted like; he said it tasted like meat. At least he didn’t say chicken.

     With Halloween approaching, it is handy to know that if a vampire should sneak up from behind and try to bite me—I can threaten to turn him into a casserole. 

Late September

The late September warmth coaxed the flowers on her teacup into bloom.

quote adapted from Shelley Hely

artist is unknown

Prayers from the Ark

    I have been listening to the crickets sing their love songs at night, and it reminds me of a treasured poem. The poems I like the best, the ones I understand the most are usually the ones that define my own experience in sharper images and more perceptive words than I could muster myself. I reverence the way the mind of a good poet works. Sometimes I use lines of poetry as prayer. The Prayer of the Cricket is one that often falls from my lips when I have been shabby or small.

                    O God,

                    I am little and very black,

                    but I thank You

                    for having shed

                    Your warm sun

                    and the quivering of Your golden corn

                    on my humble life.

                    Then take—but be forbearing, Lord—

                    this little impulse of my love:

                    this note of music

                    You have set thrilling in my heart.

                                                                            Amen

     For me, the images in this poem are their plain selves, unfussy and straightforward: a humble cricket, a thankful heart, a song of praise; but they are something broader too, encompassing all of me at my worst and best, all of the common and specific graces of Providence and my own modest yet earnest responses to them.

 Many years ago for our nineteenth anniversary, my husband gave me this slim volume of poetry: Prayers From the Ark by Carmen Bernos De Gasztold translated from the French by Rumer Godden. The poems are simple but sage, and I recognize myself in many of them, as in the prayers of the cricket, lark, butterfly, glow worm and ox...while there are others I can only aspire to. Oh, to be a dog or a bee! It is an often read, beloved book and the only thing that could improve it for me would be to possess the ability to read the poems in the original French…je suis tout petit et très noir…

Summer's Ghost

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.

                                                                 ~ Henry Rollins ~

     Sitting on my deck in the late afternoon shade with the warmish winds of summer’s wreckage sifting through the trees, I am writing stories and sprinkling water on the new sod I laid in the back garden yesterday. There are sun diamonds sparkling in the wet grass; bees are feasting in the lavender; and a chorus of crickets is singing secrets to the earth. Fragrant pots of rosemary, basil and thyme at my elbow, still smelling of sunshine, will soon give up the ghost but will continue to haunt me in the shape of stews, roasted vegetables, sauces, pizza and bread as the days shorten and the cold closes in. Why did I wait so long to grow herbs in the summer? What other joys have I overlooked that take so little effort yet give so generously?

     These days I welcome the apparition of summer because it is milder than the full-bodied being. While I do prefer autumn over the other offspring of the year, I am in no hurry to release this last embrace of the season.

painting by Vincent Van Gogh