The Cold War, Revolutions, Men In Black, and Cute Grandbabies

What could the Cold War, revolutions, Men In Black, and cute grandbabies possibly have in common?

I’ll tell you.

Growing up in the Cold War, we heard a lot in school about what life was like under totalitarian regimes. Average citizens were stripped of their self-determination and forced to labor for the state.  We heard about China’s Red Revolution and the Khmer Rouge, where intellectuals were disposed or “re-educated” in favor of a peasant society at the mercy of the despot.

Then came the movie Men in Black.  Men in Black kept order among the aliens. The good ones worked for the government and the bad ones were ousted.  The MIB had a flashing device to erase the memory of ordinary citizens who had unwittingly discovered their activities.

When the Cute Grandtwins came into power, it all started to fit into a pattern.  I had obviously, unwittingly, been swept up in a totalitarian regime of Cutie Pies, sent to re-education camp, where my self-determination had been stripped from me.  They too, possessed one of those memory-erasing flashing devices, that they had used on me to erase all memory of sanity. Now I was forced to labor for the little despots.

Forget about writing blogs, keeping a neat and orderly house or lifestyle, or doing the thousand things on my to-do list.  The Cutie Pies have me down on the floor, stacking blocks for them, singing them songs, clapping hands, winding up little cars.  They totally have me at their regal mercy, I am to feed them Cheerios and cut up edamame beans.  I must adore their chubby little legs and blow on their fat little tummies as I change and dress them.  Finally I pay them homage as they nap in their Pack-N-Plays, with their sweet, dimpled starfish hands wielding absolute power, and insisting on my complete capitulation.  I am not an altogether unwilling citizen, I must admit.

Of course, I pledge them allegiance every day, and hope they have a long and merry reign. 

But all was not well in the kingdom.  The Court Physician expressed concern about Baby Girl.  Appointment after appointment, measurement after measurement.  It seemed she had too big a head.  It didn’t match the Court Physician’s charts. 

So the Parents took her in for an ultrasound to make sure there wasn’t anything amiss.  I, the loyal peasant, sang prayers.

Huzzah, all was well, but then again the next appointment, the Court Physician frowned, hemmed and hawed, took more measurements and said it might be best if Baby Girl be taken to the Grand Wizard Neurologist, to be given anesthesia and a CT scan. 

In the Wizard’s waiting room were all sorts of signs for brain cancer support groups.  Having just lost a friend to brain cancer this year, the Mother of Baby Girl had some concerns.  That anesthesia thing didn’t sound too tra-la-la either.

Ah ha.  They did not know with whom they dealt.  Baby Girl called in the Men In Black, who convinced the Grand Wizard that Baby Girl, as a big grown-up 10 month old, was completely capable of lying still in the CT scanner.  Men in Black can be extremely convincing.  Huge weapons, you know.  So the Grand Wizard skipped the anesthesia part.  Baby Girl was as good as her word, and was very still, and the Grand Wizard found nothing amiss.

Mother of Baby Girl was mighty relieved, the Men In Black said to call them if anyone questioned Baby Girl’s prowess again.  After all, they had a fond liking for big heads, since they worked with aliens all the time.

I wasn’t surprised that the Grand Wizard found nothing amiss.  Baby Girl simply has a big head because she is a genius.  And I’m not saying that because I’m required to by law.

But I will say since I’ve told you about recent Men In Black activities, I want you to hold very still while I….

FLASH! 

The Big Bang Theory, or Cosmic Jigsaws

I haven’t put together a jigsaw puzzle for a long time.  When visiting my mom recently in her assisted living, she had a lot of them because she can’t hear TV very well and needs to do something.  Some were not easy.  But we worked together, eventually snapping them triumphantly into place.  “Ah HA!” we’d shout.

In the scientific world, theory has it that our universe started with the Big Bang.  This must have been impressive.  All matter condensing in to a very small dot, then BOOM, exploding outward and created the far flung stars.  Evidently, these sociable stars again to want to conjoin, and put themselves back into galaxies.  Our own galaxy spins in a spiral rotation.  

Do all galaxies spin?  Never wondered about this before.  I can picture them spinning as a dance of triumph as if they had collected the pieces of the Big Bang-created jigsaw and put at least part of it together.  Those big radio listening devices aimed at space probably hear a cosmic “Ah HA!”

Anything divisive or explosive just doesn't seem natural to us.  We feel as if our lives are a dumped out jigsaw puzzle.  

Even the stars, billions of miles apart, want to form galaxies.  When we don’t feel a part of things, we’re sad.  Everybody wants to be included.

When putting together a jigsaw puzzle, it helps to look at photo on the box.  Step back and look at the whole.  What makes us feel complete?  What are we looking for in our relationships, our family, our friends, our world?  Usually it is simple.  To belong.  To feel loved, needed, wanted, appreciated.

Notice in your next conversation with someone you’ve just met how there is a natural inclination to find common ground.  It is compelling for us to find ways to draw closer.  Knowing that gravitational pull and a yearning to draw together is so innate in every atom in the universe can go a long way in helping to dispel the jigsaw puzzle presented to us every day, whether divisive countries, or broken families and relationships.

When we’re feeling challenged by our own Big Bang events, then it is time to reach out in charity.  Tie down moments of good.  Lasso and hog tie bits of caring. Throw mooring lines of kindness.  When at last you’ve got some semblance of order once again, I’ll join with you in a triumphant “Ah HA!”

Heritage Breeds of Chickens

At our local living history museum, Ft. Nisqually, we have fine ladies who preen and display some of the nicest dresses that needles ever wrought.  We have gents strutting in beaver felt top hats.  We have hordes of adolescents peeping for the fiddler to rosin up her bow.  We’ve got mountain men with tomahawks stuck in their belts.  We’ve got a great garden, and we’ve got chickens.

Seems like most backyards have them too.  Children visitors used to be amazed at cuddling baby chicks and hearing them peep.  Now they question us as to what chicken feed we might use and offer opinions as to what breed they are.  I don’t keep backyard chickens.  Know very little about what to feed them.  I've been told they are speckled Sussex, a heritage breed.

I do know my way around a kitchen though, and was a bit surprised awhile back when I was hustling my cooking gear and dutch oven into the period kitchen.  The chickens aren’t allowed in there and yet one of the hens hiding in the corner.  Most mountain men out here would crow about finding the chicken already handy in the kitchen.  At least, that was what they would tease.  Our chickens are for show only.

“C’mon, sweetie, out you go,” I urged.

The chicken cowered in the corner. 

I swished my long skirts and attempted to herd it out to the door. 

It started getting huffy and settled in.

I tried to pick it up and got pecked.

“C’mon now, you can’t stay here” My hand was pink and there was already a sharp bruise.  I refused to be frightened by a chicken.

The chicken started offering opinions as to which MY heritage.  What breed of chicken was I? 

I was not going to be outdone by a chicken.

“C’mon, you sassy bird,” I ordered.  “Get the cluck out!”  I gently scooped it forward with my foot. 

The chicken stood up, plopped out an egg, and ran off screaming indignities.

Every bird in the coop must have heard about the wretched treatment I meted out.  It may be my imagination, but they all give me the cold shoulder.  And the rooster?  Well, he won’t even give me the time of day.

Post Apocalyptic House

When my mom came to visit me in Seattle, her hometown, we would occasionally drive past the house where she grew up.  It never looked the same to her.  Although it is nice, it was not as great as she remembered. Her dad was a florist and had traffic-stopping flower beds.  Personally, I don’t think the magnificence of his flower beds really had anything to do with the fact he was a florist.  It had more to do with the fact that he lived in a small house with four daughters and a wife.

He needed to escape the drama and hours of them practicing scales on the piano.  So he fled to the garden.  My mom remembers their garden gazebo often smelled of cigar smoke.  Some men have their man caves in the basement with TVs and beer.  Her dad sat in a gazebo surrounded by little girls’ tea sets and forgotten dollies.

But he didn’t neglect what was inside the house.  The family was a close knit one.  I have pictures of the inside of her house and recognize the furniture as the very chairs I sat on growing up and the paintings I looked at my whole life.  Here I thought they were antiques.  In reality?  Hand-me-downs from my grandmother.  But basically, isn’t that what antiques are?  Hand-me-downs bestowed and lovingly kept?

My mom, being the only one left from her family and my dad’s family, has piles of inherited stuff.  All of it cherished because it belonged to people she loved.  I can imagine manor houses in England are stuffed to the rafters with treasures.  But even manor houses get full.  How do they handle all those years of accumulation?  How do you pitch the slightly worn Victorian chair your mom sat in every night?  What do you do with your dad’s lovingly preserved Boy Scout uniform?  The medals from World War II?  What do you do with HIS father’s drafting tools?

Sell them? When my aunt and uncle passed away, my cousins faced this dilemma.  One cousin lives across the country, the other travels a lot, so neither of them could keep the collections of silver boxes, art, or paintings from Europe.  They were sold for pennies on the dollar.

Between sentimentality and economy, my brothers and I have kept everything from a generation raised in the Depression who never threw anything out.

This past year, Mom’s had to move out of her house and into assisted living, and now faces moving to skilled nursing. Yesterday my husband and I came down to visit, and are staying in her abandoned house.  It’s as if she just went out shopping months ago and never came back.

Very post-apocalyptic here.  There are quiet rooms where people used to live, books with bookmarks still in them.  Photo albums, beds they slept in, half-used hand lotion.  Spiders are in the pantry, dead flies in the shower.  An overturned walker lies in the den.

The collections of items that have been loved for generations are adrift in a forgotten sea.  Memories call like mournful foghorns.  Christmas parties, four weddings and receptions, and black tie dinner parties for 50 people were all held here.  Piercing fragments of the past stab me in every room.  My dad cooking breakfast on Saturday morning, my mom cutting roses.  Dogs, babies, college students---gone.  All that is left is spider webs and empty chairs.

But there are torch bearers.  Lighthouses.  A voice calling through the fog. 

Visiting my mom today, I showed her some pictures of my grandchildren and told her of our plans for the future.  She wanted to be included in them.  She wanted to go up to Washington once more, wanted to see our new cabin when it was built.  Her face lit up when I told her about it.  I held her rope-veined hand, the tissue paper skin cool in mine. 

You can count on me Mom.  You will be included.  In all the future Thanksgivings, when I’m making the stuffing with your special recipe.  In all the future Christmases when I’m tying the bow just like you did.  All the future times when I’m singing your favorite hymns to my grandchildren. Whenever I'm kind, or gracious, or loving.

You’ll be there.  Forever.

At the Helm of Adventure

In the summer the Odyssey, our local Sea Scout sailboat, sets out for the San Juan Islands.  Usually I go for a week of red shirts, lots of cooking, and storytime. 

The Sea Scouts range from age 14-21, usually leaving about age 18 when they head off to college.  If it is a young crowd, the ship is awash in giggly screaming girls, and sleepy sloppy boys who can’t find their socks.  One year the girls got to stay in the aft cabin.  After hearing about broken relationships and tears, he-said-she-said, the skipper described it as “chick hell.”  Having a galley right next to the foc’sle, filled with farting boys, contraband candy, or used Q-Tips, I have my own descriptions of what to stand aghast at.

Somehow they morph into the finest kids on the planet.  What magic is wrought within that 90 feet of wood!  Maybe the diesel fumes from my stove have tweaked ol’ Cookie’s brain into being slightly off so that I see them differently as the years go on.

Or maybe they really are the finest ever.

Some of the crew this year was older and ready to embark on the next step of their lives. One young man is gone now to Calif. Maritime Academy.  Hair shorn and in a spanking white uniform.  Another is heading for the Navy, where he will be a Special Forces rescue swimmer.  Others are headed off to college, or are already there.  Some will move up to take over the leadership of the boat. 

We toasted s’mores on Sucia Island, filled with caves to explore, forest trails, hidden harbors, cliff-side hikes, or perhaps a game of touch football on the beach.  Another day, the kids zipped off on the zodiac and caught crabs in Bellingham Bay.  Another day they rigged the little boats we carry to sail, or kayaked, or had shore leave in Port Townsend. 

Of course the best moments are when we put the sails up.  Our mainsail is huge, 105 feet off the waterline.  On that week's unforgettable morning, the canvas snapped to attention and caught the wind of Rosario Passage, where sea birds mewed and a bouy bell slowly clanged at us.

Along the cliffs, past rocky points where sea lions basked and argued, we raced over the glittering azure waters of Puget Sound.

The wind flirted with the aromas coming from my galley of a promised tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch. A never-to-be-forgotten sunny day on the edge of a continent, on the edge of childhood about to be left behind like the white foamy wake at our stern. 

Most of the young men and women clustered around the bow, looking out for what was ahead.  A few hung around the helm steering our group’s course, looking up at the vane at the top of the mast. Some were at the navigation table, plotting our future and answering the radio’s call.  But all of them were working at going somewhere.  Somewhere of promise.  

They have a lot to look forward to.  Even if they tease me and tell me all they are looking forward to is tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches.

Oh We Ain't Got a Barrel of Money

With all the hype surrounding the royal birth of the as yet unnamed baby prince, I wish Prince William and Duchess Kate all the happiness in the world.  But my thoughts this week are on another little baby boy, born on July 16^th.

While the new baby prince will be, well, treated like a prince, baby Isaac will never know his father, because his father died of brain cancer a few months ago. 

Brandon, Isaac’s daddy, was loved by many.  Our daughter knew him in high school, and our son-in-law knew him at college, so they had a lot of the same friends.

Last year, Son-in-law and Brandon ran in a good-time race they have every year up here in the Northwest called the Warrior Dash.  Participants run three miles, then go over and under cargo nets, huge walls, fire, and mud.

Before the race

This year, a crowd of friends gathered to honor Brandon at the Warrior Dash.  Our matching tee-shirts had Brandon’s picture from last year’s race on it, with “Team B” under it.  Team B for Brandon, but also because none of the runners considered themselves potential winners.

After the mud

After the slog through the mud and the resulting cheers, glasses of celebratory offerings were raised and we toasted Brandon.  Then we zoomed off to a backyard picnic at the home of some of the participants’ parents.

Sitting in the backyard, it was fun to scan down the 40 foot table at the horde of friends, laughing over the funny hats with horns that were issued at the race.  Children ran around picking raspberries, blueberries, shooting each other with squirt guns, swinging in swings suspended from grandpa’s apple trees, and stuffing themselves with hot dogs.  Grandparents clustered together and chatted, and young parents guffawed together and swung their children onto their shoulders.

So this is the society that baby Isaac will grow up in.  He WILL know his father, for so many loved him, and continue to do so.  Isaac will be swung up on the shoulders of “daddies”, he will swing among the trees with his “sisters and brothers” and be admonished to wash his hands by his “grandparents”.  In the backyards of many families, there will never be any of a daddy’s qualities missing, for they will be offered in abundance by friends who hold the princely treasures of a father’s love in their hearts, ready to offer up and pour out on this little boy as he grows up.

Team B?  Yes, B for Brandon, but I don't feel his friends are a second class team.  They are top-notch.  Winners.  Full of life and love and the gifts of friendship.  Royality.

There used to be a men’s chorus back in the 60’s led by a smiling, goatee-ed man named Mitch Miller.  We baby boomers loved to “sing along with Mitch” and the chorus.  A bouncing ball hit the words scrolling along the bottom of the TV screen, and families crooned in their living rooms in front of the black and white TV’s.  Ask any boomer if they remember this, and the answer will invariably be yes.  Not only that, they will probably burst into one of their favorite songs.

Here’s one of mine, and it makes me think of the good times and trials that surround any friendship.  I offer it up to Brandon:

Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money

Maybe we’re ragged and funny,

But we’re travelin’ along,

Singin’ a song,

Side by side.

Through all kinds of weather,

What if the sky should fall?

Just as long as we’re together,

It doesn’t matter at all.

Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money

Maybe we’re ragged and funny,

But we’re travelin’ along,

Singin’ a song,

Side by side.

Brandon on right

Do You Hev A Flag?

Right where we wanted to put a driveway stood a fire hydrant.  The driveway was for a detached garage for our little runabout boat.  Okay, the fire hydrant wasn’t smack in the middle, but it impeded our ability to back the boat into the garage, a difficult maneuver even when one has a driveway the size of an airport runway.  The only place for the detached garage where we’d have access from the road, was behind the fire hydrant.  The city said they’d move the fire hydrant but it would be a guh-jillion dollars.

Our neighbor had a suggestion.  At least for the purposes of this blog, it was a neighbor.  Hubby certainly would never think of such a nefarious plan.  Pay the garbage man a hundred bucks to run over it with his truck.  Then when the city came out to replace it, they’d find a driveway where it used to be.  It would have to be put 10 feet further west.

Of course, that never happened.  Besides, our garbage man couldn’t hit the side of a barn, much less a skinny little fire hydrant.  Even if we painted a big bull’s-eye on the corner of the driveway, he never puts the garbage can down where he finds it.  Instead, it is replaced right in the middle of our driveway where we nearly back the car over it every Wednesday morning.  At the last minute, we spot it and have to jump out and move it.  Our garbage man has a very funny sense of humor.

So hubby came up with a plan to help back the boat up into the garage.  He attached an orange flag to a long piece of pipe.  He inserts this in a slightly bigger pipe standing upright near the fire hydrant, and then when he is backing the boat in, he can see if he is going to hit the thing.

Flags seem to bear remarkable powers to save or conquer.  Eddie Izzard, a British comedian, commented that this was how empires of yore got to be so big.  The Brits or Christopher Columbus or some conqueror like Cortez would land in far flung foreign lands and proclaim, “I hereby claim this land for my mother county!”  The locals or natives would come rushing up and say, “You can’t do that.  We live here.”  “AHHHHH,” the conquerors would say, in a very upper crust accent, “But do you hev a flag?”  “A flag? What’s that?” ask the natives.  “No flag? Well, then,” the conquerors said.  “We hereby proclaim this land for our mother country.”  They’d plant a flag, and that would be that until unsavory rebellions yielded it otherwise.

Our daughter, the fifth grade teacher, lets her kids make sugar cube castles at winter break, formerly called Christmas vacation.  Because she has seen Eddie Izzard’s comedy sketch on flags, she asks them, twinkle in eye, “But do you hev a flag?” “A flag?” they ask.  “Yes! You must have a flag!” she warns, “Or anyone could come in and conquer you.”  She shows them pictures of Christopher Columbus coming ashore with his rowboat and planting a flag.

Flags promptly are colored and displayed from the topmost sugar cubes.  Often present to help during class parties and art activities, I find it interesting to see what they put on their flags. The school is in an area heavily populated by immigrants, and the children have seen many different flags.  At least twenty five flags from around the world bedeck the front hallway, welcoming all.

So what do the children put on their flags?  Some draw their own portraits.  Some put the flag from their native country on one turret and an American flag on another. Many of them put crosses, for no one would attack the cross of Jesus, they innocently tell me.  But every single one of them believes a flag more effective than a cannon.  If that’s all it takes, then God bless ‘em. 

Meanwhile, the fire hydrant flag has been pressed into service elsewhere.  The five little neighborhood girls, ages 12, 10, 9, 6 and 5, have discovered that we are babysitting the twin grandchildren this week.  Consequently, the doorbell rings every twenty minutes, which cause a nuclear explosion of barks from our cockapoo Huckleberry, whose first (and last) line of defense is hardly a flag, but rather the yappiest barks he can muster.  If the babies are napping, well, that nap is over.

So, the little girls are allowed to ring the doorbell only if the babies are awake and ready to receive company.  We took the fire hydrant flag and put it in a holder we have on our deck for tiki torches.  Only when the flag is flying may the girls come over. Flag goes up, within 30 seconds, the doorbell will ring.  But that’s okay, they are welcomed and needed.  Yesterday they came streaming through the door like a river of blond hair and eddied around the babies, bringing with them presents of toys and letters to the babies telling them how much they are loved and how cute they are. 

Both the babies wanted their bottles at the same time, so I parked them on the couch in the older girls’ arms and they got to feed them. 

The two littlest girls wanted something to love, so Huckleberry sufficed.

My husband laughs when I put the flag out and can’t resist saying “Do you hev a flag?” 

I sure do.  But I’m not the one doing the conquering.  The story ends differently this time.

Faith in the Dream

A pregnant young woman I know, along with her husband and nearly two-year-old daughter, are journeying around the US this summer.  They started near their home in Gettysburg, PA and have driven through tornado warnings in Ohio, to the sparkling white faces of Mt. Rushmore, furry bison of Yellowstone, and finally to the young woman’s former home here in Washington state.  They visited Mt. Rainier National Park and stayed at the lodge up at Paradise, rode the duck boats in Lake Union, visited the Oregon Coast, spent time at Sunriver, Oregon with family.  Then they got to stay at John Muir’s paradise, Yosemite.  Following that, they saw the Grand Canyon and are currently on Rte. 66 heading back home. 

I think this is a laudable trip.  Even more so when one is 6-7 months pregnant with the hopes of a new life to carry on in this world.  She blogs about her trip and says they’ve met some very nice folks.  America, from sea to shining sea.

In the newspaper today, there was a story about another couple that took a journey across the US from Key West to Deadhorse, Alaska.  Along the way, they noticed the diversity of color in America.  In Nebraska, a Sudanese girl and a white child turned a jump rope for a mix of children.  A former Mexican ran a bakery and restaurant in the heart of the Midwest.  Gosh, I remember how homesick I was for Mexican food when we moved from San Diego to Chicago in 1967.  There was no such thing as a tortilla or even a jar of salsa in any grocery store.  Now?   Pho noodle shops and Halal meat shops.  Immigrants are pouring in, in record numbers. 

George Zimmerman was just acquitted yesterday of killing an unarmed black teenager.  Why would anyone want to come here, since America is so rife with racism?  But they do.  Spending vast amounts of money for plane tickets, or risking life and limb to get here illegally.  

Coming to America costs more than a plane ticket or a trip across the Rio Grande.  It means to have faith in a dream.  For an immigrant, it is a hope of a better life.  For those of us already here, we might have faith in a dream of equality, of justice, of overcoming prejudices based on race, age, sex, or any sort of preferences.  Justice should be served, and we must rethink the laws that would allow someone to aggravate a fight, then kill the person reacting.  I can legally walk into a bar, pick a fight with someone and then shoot them dead when they swing at me.  LEGALLY.  Self defense, your honor, just like George Zimmerman. I am terribly sorry that Trayvon Martin’s parents are grieving over their son.  What a unfathomable loss. 

So right now we need faith.  Faith that begats hope, a faith that sings to us when the night is blinding, a faith which puts wings on ideas of brotherhood and opportunity. 

Mustard Seed

The mission of America, the time worn American Dream, will carry on through this, working steadily toward the mountain of freedom.  So today, I invite you to revisit that great speech of a noble American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Go ahead, take the time to read this last bit I’ve excerpted.  Your tomorrows might just be that much grander for the match light of faith it strikes.

…I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The Fairy Door

Someone gave me a bag of slightly yellowed lace.  Supposedly, soaking old lace in OxyClean would make it come white again, which I tried.  Some pieces of it came white, but some did not.  I rinsed it and laid it over a deck chair to dry in the sun.  The breeze along Puget Sound was making lacy white caps of its own, showing off.  The lace dried in the breeze, but shorter lengths of it got blown across the deck and dirtied again.  I had to go chasing after it before it fell into the vegetable beds.  I guess I found it all.  Perhaps that is when I should have looked in the apple trees.

On our property we’ve got two knarly apple trees.  Years ago in a flight of whimsy, I put a greenman face in each. 

One is a kingly sort, with leaves curling around his jolly face.  He’s in the smaller of the trees, up front and low enough so any child can spot him right off.  The enchantress is in the bigger of the trees, up high and off to one side so it takes a bit of looking to find her.  Upon spotting her, the realization hits that she has been looking at you for some time.

Summer is wonderful time for taking a turn around the garden at twilight, enjoying the roses, seeing if the blueberries are ripe yet, wondering why we’ve had so many tiny green apples blow out of the bigger apple tree.  Moss so covers the limbs that ferns have grown along the branches.  The trees are pretty old.  The biggest has a gigantic canopy of cool shade. 

As you may know from previous posts, one must garden for children’s imaginations ‘round here, including big rocks to sit on for tea parties, stumps to transport the wisher to a different world, and dry streambeds in which to find crystally magic rocks.  So when Daughter With The Twins suggested the apples trees would be just the place for a fairy door or a fairy window, it didn’t take long for them to appear.

I found the fairy window and door so impossibly enchanting, that I called the little girls from next door to come over.  Little did I know what was to become of it. 

“Look,” I called, “see what happened in our tree!”

I showed them the window first. 

“How did you get fairies to come?” they asked.

“I put the greenmen faces on the trees, and then they knew that this yard was friendly to fairies.”

The girls decided to ask their parents to put up such faces in their trees, but then they got worried that their own trees were not knarly enough. Do you have to have mossy trees, they wondered.  I confessed I did not know the rules of fairyland.

When I took them down to the bigger apple tree, they spotted the fairy door immediately.  They peered in the window. 

“See those lace curtains?” I asked.  “I had some lace drying on the deck up there, and some of it blew away.  I see the fairies found it and used it as curtains.”

The girls peered in and there was no denying that there was my lace inside a little glass window, neatly sewn into curtains. They gaped in amazement.

How do these things come tumbling out of my mouth? 

“Not only that,” I went on, “but they took a lot of it.  I bet they've got a bedroom up here (tap, tap on the trunk).  They probably used some for a bedspread.  I wouldn’t be surprised if next week they build a tower up there.”  I pointed at one of the higher branches.

The older girls studied the tree.  “Look!  Doesn’t that look like a bridge?”

It sure did.  It was a branch left over from pruning that somehow got caught in one of the branches.

The littlest girl gently knocked on the door. 

“The door is locked,” said the older one.  “See the keyhole?” 

“Do you think they are home?” asked the little one.  They both took a turn peering in the window.  She cocked her ear and listened.  Just then, a little green apple fell out of the tree and their eyes got wide.

The girls nodded.  “How many children do they have?” they asked. 

“Five.  A boy, then three girls, then a baby boy at the end.”

“What are their names?”

Whew.  Stretching myself here.  Our German relatives with three little girls under age nine are flying over to visit next month, so it would be nice to have some Germanic names.  German is a hard language to name fairies in, in spite of the Teutonic penchant for worshiping trees.  Leaf is blatt, star is stern.  We couldn’t have fairies named Blatt and Stern.  I decided to have some English and some German.

“The father is Flitter.  He makes pumpkins turn orange.  The mother is Wispa and paints with frost.  The eldest son is Glitzern, and as you know is learning how to make apples green. I suspect he is not doing very well at it, look at how many he has knocked down.”

The girls looked at the ground.  Perhaps twenty-five little apples lay around their feet.  They nodded.

“Then they have three girls, Sonnig, Luna, and Starlit.  Sonnig is going to school to learn how to color blueberries.  If you’ve looked at my blueberries lately, she keeps getting too much purple and misses some spots that are still green.  Luna wants to paint roses, but is not old enough, and Starlit is so young she doesn’t know yet what she wants to do.  The baby is a boy named Donner, but they call him Dondi.  He’s very sweet and tiny.  They feed him milk from dandelions.”

The girls wanted the fairies to come out, but I told them that the fairies might be sitting up in the tree branches right this minute watching them.  To my great glee, dragonfly buzzed by.  The girls heard its wings but did not see it.

“Let’s go home and write them a letter,” said the girls.

An hour later they were back, with a tiny little note saying: “Dear fairies, WELCOME.  We want you to stay. –Madeline.”  They brought over some tiny doll clothes and left them on the fairies’ porch.  They put some very fine glitter on their note, which came off on the porch and lends an air of authenticity, in my opinion.

Well of course, the fairies had to leave a thank you note, so birch bark was obtained, and using a calligraphy pen, the mother fairy Wispa wrote back to thank the girls for the clothes and note.  She said that the clothes fit Luna perfectly.

Later that day, my doorbell rang again.  The girls found the birch bark note, rolled up like a scroll and tied with pink and purple embroidery floss (I must lock my sewing room).  Squeals and jumping up and down ensued.

Madeline got down and peered in the window.  “They used glue to put their window in,” she said.

“Well, I suppose they had to stick it in somehow,” I replied.

“I bet they used slug mucus for glue,” said Madeline.

I laughed.  “Probably.  Look at these tiny little nails they used to make their porch.”  I quietly knew that those naughty fairies have been in Hubby’s shop using the nail gun.  

"I've been thinking about Starlit, the littlest girl who doesn't know what she wants to do yet.  I think she should put dewdrops on spiderwebs."

Who knew that right next door lived a future novelist?

Towards dinner, my doorbell rang.  The girls wanted to show me the note they left in a tree in their yard, inviting the fairies to make a house there.  They put out building materials by their pond, including leaves and day lilies, and a lot of doll clothing.

Later, after the girls got back from swim lessons: ding-dong.  Hubby answered as I was watching TV.  The girls came dancing in to show me the gifts the fairies had left them, and the building material was GONE.  Their gifts were a tiny key that fit their keyhole, a metal bug, an acorn charm, a piece of rabbit fur tied up with blue beads and a red ribbon, and finally some of the lace “they probably had left over from making the curtains and bedspread.”

The girls wanted to go back out to the apple tree one last time.  It was twilight, and they knocked on the little door.  Huckleberry the dog sat with us as we chatted around the door discussing what fairies might like and how little girls could entice them to come live next door.

If you ask me, I think two little blond fairies already live next door.