Category Archives: Stories

Those I’ve seen/heard

EEK! Now he tells me!

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Last weekend Jay was snow-machining with his family.

From about an hour before he left Saturday, and all Sunday morning I felt this aweful sence of foreboding.  I was continually pulled, tempted, toward fear, and each time (“It’s the most I can do!”) I returned to praying for Jay.

I mentioned my discomfort to a few other people and asked them to join me, and to pray for my own peace too, since I didn’t know if it had anything to do with Jay at all.

When Jay finally called that evening, I felt peace for the first time all weekend, and was finally able to relax.

“Did anything happen this weekend?” I asked.  “Did you have a good time.”

Oh it was great– loads of fun.  His machine never broke down, he was the only one of the party who didn’t get stuck, etc.

I thought his not getting stuck was a sort-of cute anti-climax  to my fervent prayers and the week passed.

Today, for his birthday, I gave Jay an avalanche book written by a lady here in Alaska.

He thought it was great and was thumbing through it and casually mentioned how he broke an avalanche loose Sunday morning.

“Sunday morning!” I say.  “What happened?”

And he says he was zipping along and hears this huge crack, and sees this huge snow starting to lean, so he turned and started ripping away as fast as he could.  He looks over his shoulder, and to his surprise the snow’s not falling.

He, of course, told it much more coherently than that.

I just felt a mind-numbing, gut-twisting realization that there was probably a very real reason I felt my husband was in danger, and that I needed to pray.

Know Your Child

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Here is a good example of why you need to know your kid.

I found Wiley and the Hairy Man at the library and snagged it because I liked a telling I’d heard once, and wanted to look at the story.

Melody (2 1/2) got a hold of it, and because I didn’t want it to be too terrible too talk about (she might have already looked at the pictures) I decided reluctantly to read it to my girls.

Melody *latched* on to it. She wanted to hear it again and again.

If you’ve never heard of it, it’s about a boy who avoids getting captured by the Hairy Man (a wicked-looking snatcher) by using his wits and following his mother’s advice.

You may guess already these are themes I like my children to absorb.

In addition, the Hairy Man is twice gotten rid of by the arrival of Wiley’s hound dogs. And Melody and I will nod together that everybody is afraid of something– even scary somebodies.

One evening I had just finished telling someone why I choose to read that story to my kids when my mother, skimming the book said, “That’s a pretty creepy thing in there. That one ought to go back [to the library].”

I don’t think I contradict my mom that much (we agree on so much to begin with), but to this opinion I just said, “No, I have my uses for it,” and felt a sudden thrill at knowing both my own purposes and my daughter well enough to be confident I was making the right decision.

A Polite Malady– a Tuesday Tale

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(This is up later than usual– I’ve been without a browser for a few days.)

A woman in China went to visit her married daughter who (according to custom) lived with her new mother-in-law.

The three women had just sat down to the evening meal when a gust of wind blew out the lamp.

“I will fetch a light,” the daughter’s mother-in-law said in the darkness, but the daughter was already rising and leaving the room, so instead the mother-in-law remained.

Thinking she was alone with her daughter, the visiting mother began a lecture on the duties of a host to see to the greatest comfort of her guests, recommending her daughter turn the choicest sides of the serving platter to her mother, in order that she might take the best without appearing greedy.

“Indeed, as the guest is your own mother, nothing less than filial duty demands you giver her the best that may be offered.”

Just then, the daughter returned with light, and the mother realized in horror that her daughter’s mother-in-law was the one listening to everything she said.

“Forgive me,” the mother said. “I have a curious malady with no known cure. It causes me so speak nonsense in sudden darkness, until the light returns and brings me back to my senses.”

The mother-in-law nodded knowingly.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “I understand perfectly, for I have a similar malady that affects me in the darkness. When the light suddenly goes out, I am rendered deaf, and can hear no word until a new light is brought.”

Also from Ragan’s book.

The Story Cocoon

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I’ve been within the membrane of a story since the movie ended yesterday evening.

Part of the longevity has to do with the type of movie (Amazing Grace), of course. But more even than that, I attribute the strength of the membrane to a post-story silence that I observed yesterday, maybe for the first time.

When telling stories– especially heavy, significant stories, and especially to an older audience– one recommendation is to take an entire five-minutes for silence after the story, before talking about it or starting a new one.

On our way to the car, and our first two minutes there, I effervesced my first impressions, and how the the woman’s role coalesced cleanly with three other sources (I may essay about later) that were on my mind recently.

This talk had made me turn off the radio (I refuse to compete with talk radio) so when we made a stop for Jay partway home, I waited in a quiet car.

There is a line in The Magician’s Nephew about the place you could almost feel the trees growing, and that was the curious sensation I felt while Jay was gone: a sense of growing and solidifying. Foundation stones, or roots of Story were growing both down and out, connecting something in my core to something in my story cocoon.

~ ~ ~

Do you know what I mean by a story cocoon, or a story membrane?

It’s not just the ability to get lost in a story, but the presence and weight of when you’re there. It’s the extra atmospheric pressure of another world, and the iridescent bubble that hasn’t quite popped, even when the story’s ended.

It’s the slowness you feel as you’re leaving a dark theater, or closing a book, while your mind works to order the myriad of sensations you’ve just received and reconcile them to your understanding of the world as it is. (Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn’t.)

And it’s that feeling of a story sticking with you, affecting you.

~ ~ ~

The idea about this first came when I was reading The Thirteenth Tale, and while it applies to books as much as to movies, I think we experience it with movies more.

I’m beginning to think that this is the strongest argument for Charlotte Mason‘s directive to read slowly. More slowly and in smaller sections than you can based simply on your ability or interest, in order to allow the content to infuse your thinking and, basically, last long enough to truly affect you.

~ ~ ~

The question, of course, remains as to how much you want a story to affect you. Good/effective writing or storytelling will create a stronger cocoon that’s harder to escape from, and this is why I always want to be so careful what I expose myself to. After all, innocence is not just for kids.

The Heaviness of Other Worlds

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Once when Melody was only a few months old, Jay and I reluctantly left off our first watching of Seabiscuit as soon as she fell asleep. In a moment of selfishness (or opportunism) the next morning, I finished it while Jay was at work.

I found the ending very moving, and felt full under the spell and weight of the story, even without having seen the whole thing at once.

I was agitated. Keyed up.

Not feeling the energy to do anything else, I took the second movie I’d begun the day before, and put it back to see if there was more.

Just as Jay had arrived home from work the night before, I was nearing the end of the new Oklahoma! and turned it off. The cast was in the midst of the Title finale. That song was the last in the 50s version of the movie I watched once with my Grandma. It had bored me to pieces then. (This version is *much* better, though kicked up to a stronger PG-13 in my estimation.)

This next morning I was curious to see if that really was the end. The move had never seemed done at that point, loose ends still dangling.

Well, it wasn’t done.

For the next 25 minutes or so I was dragged through a shiveree, a knife-fight and trial (with accompanying emotional angst) before the incongruously tidy finish.

That hour was one of the most intense and disturbing of my life. Seriously. I had buried myself in the most intense parts of two other worlds with out the diluting time between.

The atmospheric pressure was too heavy; the membrane doubled, too thick and confining. And I had no idea how to process.

I continued shaking my head like a dizzy cat most of the remainder of the day (a friend came for lunch, and this was nearly all I could talk about).

Maybe it was the bends— a theoretically preventable malady that takes thought or planning to avoid.

I know I’ve been very careful not to do that to myself again.

It All Depends on Your Definition

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The professor paced through his lecture. “Every woman is a man-hunter,” dropped from his lips as an unquestioned fact.

The year was 1950, and my grandmother was working her way through college, still a spinster at age thirty-one.

In an undertone meant to be heard, Grandma took the authority to correct the teacher’s misrepresentation.

“I’ve never met a man I couldn’t live without.”

Two weeks later, with the same quiet voice, she invited the class to her wedding.

Mocking her, the professor inquired, with polite words, whether she’d met someone new.

“No,” she said. “But I used to think I could live without him.”

The Stolen Child– a Tuesday Tale

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The sídhe (pronounced, “shee”) are a powerful and nearly human-looking fairy folk (often distinguished from the flying, cute and/or friendly varieties by spelling it faerie). They are primarily distinguished by their unusually long, slender fingers and their sharply pointed ears.

~ ~ ~

Two women of the sídhe were walking a road that ran along the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, when they came upon a human baby, crying in the middle of the path.

Looking all about them and seeing no one, the fairies quickly wrapped it up in the shawl of one, and, taking the child with them, they hurried along faster than they had come.

At the same time, a pair of fishermen were heading home for the day, and one spotted something white on the side of the nearly sheer cliff.

His companion tried to pretend he thought it was a bird, but the first man insisted on navigating the rocks and climbing up. He rightly suspected it was some traveler who had become lost in the mist and tumbled over the edge.

It was a young woman, hurt but alive, and they brought her home, handing her off to the fisherwives to be tended.

When the girl came to her senses she immediately began to cry for her baby, and the men were sent back out to look for him. But neither up nor down the road, nor in any of the nearest villages could they hear any news of a found bairn.

When the young woman regained her strength she said goodbye to the kind fisherfolk, promising to return when she had found her child.

After much fruitless wandering, the young mother happened upon a gypsy camp where an old grandmother divined in the fire that the baby was taken by the sídhe, and advised the girl to give up her quest.

When she refused, the gypsy mother gave her some advice.

“The sídhe, for all their magical arts, have no power to create anything for themselves.

“Whatever they want they must either buy or steal. If you can offer something rich, rare, and beyond compare, that may buy your child back from the sídhe.”

Continue reading »

I’ve been writing stories for a long time…

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Here are a few tags I thought might sound interesting. I’ve been cruising through old files tonight (yes, avoiding my current novel– telling myself I’m too distracted/tired to work on it just now…)

Oh, help! Marika thought desperately. Will no one rescue me?

She huddled absurdly under her bed in the darkness, she, nearly 13, and almost too big to fit. She’d played at this game before. The memory seemed obscene now.

She’d played at losing her parents and being alone in the house when robbers came– just for the safely contained thrill of fear.

And now it was coming true. She stuffed the fabric of her skirt into her mouth to muffle the choking sobs. She was not a coward, but this was too much for her.

The snuffling sounds of dogs came into the large bedchamber, and Marika wished she could faint, certain she’d be quieter if unconscious.

~ ~ ~

Then this, like my current work, is from a fairytale:

Two young men, born on the same day into very different families and circumstances, both expect to marry the same young woman.

It just so happens the girl they both want is under a curse from a slighted fairy (aren’t all the good ones?), and because of that something bad will happen if she ever is touched by the light of day. She just doesn’t know what.

Only because she doesn’t have the advantage of having read the title of the story, of course. It’s from The Orange Fairy Book, if I remember correctly, and is called The White Doe.

~ ~ ~ Continue reading »

A Plea to Leave the Stories Alone

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Someone gave my kids a 3-pack of cheap paperback picture books for Christmas last year.

I have nothing against paperback books in general, and I’m not trying to say this person was cheap. I mean the quality of the books and the content itself was cheap.

Maybe the best way to say it is that these are the types of children’s books that are easy to write (ouch.) or, maybe worse, the type of book that’s only worth reading (or listening to) when very young.

I like what C.S. Lewis says in a number of different ways, and that, essentially, is that a children’s book only worth reading as a child is not really worth reading at all.

One of these books was a softened version of Hansel and Gretel. There were a number of changes made to make it more child-friendly, and what good I felt the original story could communicate was removed altogether.

The wicked step-mother and the hunger were entirely removed. The children were not abandoned by an endlessly (emotionally) battered father, but were simply lost. Hansel was not resourceful and protective of himself and his sister, merely curious or careless, letting the crumbs fall– and foolish too, imagining they would be there in the morning. (The original, you remember, had him using stones at first.)

When we got to the the witch was where my husband began to object. He has different ideas than me (our kids get a double wammy) of what wrecks a children’s story– traditional or otherwise.

Gretel knew the old woman was a witch because she made the children work ever so hard, carrying water and firewood. Whenever Jay was compelled to read the story (because we kept forgetting to make it disappear) he changed the wording to say the children were very good to help such an old woman with her heavy chores.

In the end, again, it isn’t the children’s cleverness or resourcefulness that “saves” them, but luck and the witch’s own clumsiness. And they find treasure somewhere as the house burns down around them and they bring it out with them. (Jay’s retelling always had the father scolding the children for not leaving the burning building at once).

I don’t even remember the original story having treasure at the end.

~ ~ ~

I like retellings, Just not when they change the essence of the story.

I like “age appropriate” versions of traditional tales. My 4-year-old doesn’t need to know yet that Snow White’s stepmother, the queen, wanted to eat her liver and lungs. It is enough that she wanted her dead.

My 2-year-old doesn’t need to know that a woman is being accused of eating her own children. That will not add anything to the story for her.

The stories were originally entertainment for adults, and it is only natural that some things should be softened or omitted when they are used as entertainment for children. But that doesn’t mean they should be changed to be “safe” by “modern” standards.

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The Miller, the Cook, and the King’s Three Questions– a Tuesday Tale

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A prosperous, easy-going miller was brought into trouble with his king when the miller’s cook brazenly painted, “I have no cares in all the world,” across the side of the miller’s house,

when any fool ought to know this is simply an invitation to trouble.

The king himself saw the declaration and sent a message to the unsuspecting miller, demanding he present himself in the throne room in one week’s time with the answers to three impossible questions:

  • How many stars are in the heavens?
  • What is the king worth?
  • What is the king thinking?

The miller’s life would be forfeit if he didn’t answer to the king’s satisfaction.

Understandably peeved at his cook, the miller went to his kitchen with much hand-wringing and agonizing over the unfairness of his own lot.

The cook, feeling just a little bit responsible, offered to go in the miller’s place to answer the king, being ready (he assured his master) also to take the ax if his answers were unsatisfactory.

This solution seemed most appropriate to the miller (the king knew neither of them, making the switch possible) and he agreed. After a few sleepless nights the cook felt prepared.

Appearing before the king in the miller’s clothes, the cook entered the throne room pushing a wheelbarrow filled with sacks of flour.

“What’s this?”

“It is the answer to your first riddle, O Majesty,” the false miller replied. “I have collected a grain of flour for every heavenly star– though the exercise quite addled my wits and my memory.

“If you want the exact number and have the grains re-counted, please remind me of the total.”

The king smiled and let the matter of the first question pass by.

In answer to the second question, the false miller offered a sum of 29 pieces of silver. The king was about to be offended by this when the cook reminded him that Jesus himself was sold for 30 pieces of silver.

“Finally,” said the false-miller, pulling off his hat, “I will read your thoughts: You are thinking that I am the miller, when, in truth, I am his cook.”

The king was pleased with the cook’s clever answers and ordered that both he and the miller should be richly rewarded.

The cook returned to his position in the miller’s household, and together they changed the writing on the house to read, “We have no cares in all the world!”

(Most recently read variant was in Clever Cooks.)