Fairy Tale Life

I was doing some rather mundane household chore the other day when I suddenly thought, "I'd kind of like a fairy Godmother..." 

Mama bought a set of books for us children when we were far too young to read.  She ordered some classics and among the set was a book of fairytales.  Grimms Fairytales as it happens and let me assure you that the authors' name was a fit description for the tales told therein.

When we think of Cinderella, I think of Disney's version or the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical version.  I like the 'prettiness' of those two.  Let me tell you that was not the Brothers Grimm's version.  That one was bloody. The stepsisters weren't just cruel.  They tried so hard to make the glass slipper fit that they cut off heel and toe, mutilating themselves.    Recalling that this morning put a rather sobering edge on my desire to live in a fairy tale...

But it wasn't really the life in the fairy tale I wanted.  It was a fairy Godmother who might wave a wand and make trials and troubles disappear, who might bestow a few lovely things upon me.

Cinderella was abused and used and neglected and ridiculed.  She wore rags and 'sat among the cinders'.  And why was she sitting in the cinders?  Because there she had no fire of her own to keep her warm, only the burnt-out bits of what was left from the fires for cooking and keeping others warm.  

When she hears of the ball at the palace she longs to go.  Enter the fairy Godmother, who took a pumpkin to make into a coach and rats to make into horses, mice to become coachmen, arrayed Cinderella in a glorious gown and glass slippers.   The slippers sound both painful and far too fragile to my adult mind.  You'd best watch your step in those!

Cinderella is told that she has a limited amount of time.   She must leave before midnight as everything will revert to what it was before.  A few hours of life in a fairytale and then you're out in the dark and cold with a pumpkin and a bunch of rats and mice. That seems harsh, doesn't it?  That lovely dress is changed back to the rags worn at the beginning.  You find yourself sitting among the cinders all over again.  The fairy tale life is looking less and less appealing!

But here's where the fairy Godmother worked her true magic.  She gave Cinderella a glimpse of what life could be.  That Cinderella returned to the life that she had might seem terribly cruel.  

What would my fairy tale look like?

As a young girl, a young woman, even as a middle-aged woman I daydreamed of alternate lives. Admittedly in middle-age the daydreams were hardly the same as those of the girl or the young woman.  Those two younger versions of me dreamed of romantic loves and world travels, of being rich and famous or at least very well known.  I was a teacher, a baker, a candlestick maker, a fashion designer, a writer...Oh, those daydreams were varied.

As a middle-aged woman, I daydreamed of a little house, tucked away in the woods (or the backside of a hill in a hundred-acre field).  Just four rooms where music played and candles burned at night, and I escaped into books and made jars of blackberry or wild plum jam and bathed under the stars on warm nights or sat snug by a fire on cold ones with an old quilt wrapped about my shoulders. I was self-contained, happy.  I slept on feather mattresses, soft and enveloping. In those daydreams, I slept well every night.  

I was very tired in those days and often stretched by the needs of others.  Is it any wonder my daydreams were of meeting no one's needs?  Of living a life in which I myself had no needs? 

But what begs to be answered at this stage of life is of what would I dream now?  What would my fairy tale life look like at this age?  Of what use would I make of a Fairy Godmother?  What could she give me at this time of life?  These are the questions I ask myself.  

I look back at this year behind and see that I have uncovered many clues of things I've lost.  Things that are key to who I am, who I have been all along.  But what part of me am I missing still?   There must be something I want, something I haven't got if I've voiced a wish for a fairy Godmother. 

Did Cinderella want to be a princess?  Did she dream of castles and lovely dresses and royalty and love?  Or did she just take the opportunity before her to grab hold of something different, something that was better than what she'd had thus far?

I don't know.  Perhaps her dream was everything she got. However, I can see the wisdom of what the fairy Godmother did.  Because once Cinderella had experienced the possibilities of what life might be, she had more than cinders to keep her warm.  She had the burning desire to change her life into the one she'd glimpsed. Where before she'd had nothing to use as impetus, she had hope.     But more importantly she had will.  Willingness to make a life change is fire.   And maybe when I find my dream I'll find I've got the will to have it, too.  Time will tell.