Fairytales and fictions, oh my!
On creating our reality and on our belief in the mythical and unseen
I am guilty, as most Canadian parents are, of having deceived and conned my child over a period of several years into believing that every year, a fat man dressed in a red suit sporting a full white beard infiltrated the house’s defenses through the chimney to deliver a huge pile of presents — and that he also managed to make it to the house of every child in the world in one night.
Not only that. I convinced her that a bunny, too, knew how to gain egress into our home during the night, depositing chocolate eggs throughout the main floor, but not on mommy’s desk and not in the bathroom, and no, not over there either, and I’m pretty sure the Easter bunny didn’t leave eggs in the basement or outside. But maybe in the fridge. Have you checked the fridge?
And that’s not all. The cruelest deception yet has been the Tooth Fairy who, after each tooth that abandoned Daughter’s mouth, appeared to ever-so-delicately nestle a small package containing precious stones, fairy dust, a loonie and a hand-written note under Daughter’s pillow during the night. That is, when Tooth Fairy wasn’t stuck in Australia on important business. Because sometimes that happened for two nights in a row, especially when I had no loonies in my purse. Daughter still keeps all her Tooth Fairy stones in a special drawstring bag, and for the longest time, she also had a vial of lovingly and carefully collected fairy dust. In a tragedy of epic proportions (through no fault of her own), the contents were accidentally spilled onto her bed. She slept in glitter for weeks. This was at once sad and an occasion for celebration, as I’m sure you can imagine.
Magic or lies? Dreams or reality? Imagination or fact? Kindness or cruelty?
We’re all of us older, now — beyond the age when we believed in such things, but not quite past thinking fondly of the not-so-distant memories of when we did believe. Daughter knows I am all three of these fantasy creatures, but a miniscule speck of doubt (or perhaps, hope) remains. We still talk and joke about these non-me extensions-of-mom entities as if they were real.
We believed in them once, vehemently. And, in a small part of our spirit, we continue to believe. They continue to exist — as story, as joy and hope and wonder — unseen and unlimited by physics, but nonetheless real, as the physical evidence left behind and the feelings evoked testify.
If we’ve succeeded with the ruse, a skillful slip of the heart takes place. The memories — of carefully hushed tiptoeing to a predawn living room glowing with light from the Christmas tree; the scent of pine, gingerbread and plump clementines; the unbridled awe and amazement at the gifts piled there — are good, warm, and safe memories. Moments to be cherished, unblemished by the wisdom of adulthood. Years later, when the ruse is finally revealed, we understand that our parents went to great lengths to create the fantasy and illusion. Having experienced that magic and learned its source, we begin to discover our own potential for creating magic — just in time to perform it and pass it on to our own children.
I haven’t met anyone (but now, perhaps someone will step forward to prove me wrong) who loved their childhood experiences of Christmas, Easter and the Tooth Fairy, and didn’t seek to recreate the same magical experience for their own children.
The fantasies we entertain as adults are different. But they exist, just the same. (No, I’m not referring to the illicit or sexual, which is not to say that I exclude them.)
What happens when hope and imagination get together at the local pub to shoot the shit and tell some good stories over a few drinks? Don’t they all get carried away with thinking they can take on the world and start making plans for how things might be? (And in their enthusiasm, drink more than is strictly necessary, laugh too loudly, slur their goodbyes, and then stumble home with heads full of imaginary glory?) The morning, of course, has its way with them and glory is replaced with its equally formidable counterparts, headache and his friends, pasty tongue and sluggishness.
Does the evening stir in them something lasting, something that rings true and continues to reverberate? Or does that hot burst of ambition quickly burn itself out and become smoldering despair? These are questions, I suspect, of constitution and fortitude, of character. They are best left for another day (hopefully at a pub with the welcoming warmth of friendship and Irish whiskey).
I’ve lost track of the specific and ever changing mandates I’ve been subjected to over the past two years, but of the more egregious was the interdiction to gather with one’s friends in one’s home. One way to make sure no one gets brave with their buddies over a bottle of hooch is to forbid both the buddies and the hooch.
There are no such mandates here. With the mandates in hindsight and across the ocean, these things I take for granted have been imbued with an interesting speculative hue. It is right and normal to gather with friends and acquaintances, with community and family. I do so freely now, and yet the specter of government decrees lingers, intangible, in my mind.
A week or two or three ago (I lose count so easily), our neighbour dropped by in the evening for an impromptu visit. I had slow-cooked ribs in the oven1. He arrived with a bottle of wine. Our living room had recently attained a decent level of tidiness with clean couch covers and new makeshift mood lighting (Christmas lights shoved into a demijohn — try it). This is perhaps all one needs, early on a Saturday evening in January, to start feeling mighty fine about one’s situation in life.
We drank and talked, we ate the ribs, and we drank and talked some more. No subject was left unturned. I was able to communicate in some small ways with our neighbour, largely thanks to his English being better than my Hungarian. We helped each other muddle through with crude sentences accompanied by much gesturing and many appeals to Husband for translation help. The two of us, 31 and 47 years old, pointed to items around us, and named them, first in our own language and then in the other (or, the other way around, to show off our knowledge). Fal, wall. Couch, kanapé. We were united in our struggle and success and encouraged each other gleefully. Together, we named all the things.
And this is no insignificant thing.
We declared our birthdays, and to our surprise, we are both born on the same date, albeit 16 years part. I hope we get to share a similar evening then.
Oh, but it didn’t end there.
Poetry was recited, and met with attentive listening and nodding. Even the overly long ones, the ones that stirred the soul and caused the reader’s voice to crack just a little. We sat in contemplative silence and appreciated the rhythm and song of the other voice, of the other language, of the other experience.
By the time he left, it was long past a respectable time for our neighbour to go home, and that was perfectly fine by us. It’s not far from our house to his, but we kept up the goodbyes from the front step as he walked down the path and waved to us from under the streetlamp at the front gate. There’s something reassuring about a dark dead-end lane where there is no fear because the dark shapes of the houses are safe and familiar and welcoming. On such a walk, it’s easy to walk slowly, down the middle of the lane, observing the stars in the black sky. It’s easy to feel confident about one’s place in the world.
That night, I felt hopeful and full of love for the experiences I’m having, the life I’m living, and for the people in it. I felt that together we embodied a strength that was greater than the three of us, that we set certain things right in the space around us and that we emboldened each other to take on our challenges. We bolstered our belief in the goodness of neighbours, and confirmed the need for close-knit community, for sharing stories and histories and our lives.
How is it that we could feel this transformed by such simple things?
Nothing had really changed — except that the wine and kolbász had shown an impressive ability to disappear.
What I’ve been curious about for the past few weeks is our belief in things we cannot see, and in the various ways we attempt to establish proof of their existence.
If you have no proof of a thing, if it doesn’t trigger one of your senses, how do you know it’s there? How do you prove the existence of something you can’t see, touch or hear?
Through artefacts — eggs, gifts, loonies — of course. The more, the better. Are there tracks outside in the snow? Is the milk glass empty, are the cookie and carrot eaten? Are there crumbs by the mantle? Is there fairy dust in your hair?
You observe the environment and look for changes.
You use tools more sensitive than your own senses to detect hidden clues.
You hypothesize, which is to say you create a story about what happened: It was Mrs. White on the ballroom with the knife.
And then you test it. What eight-year-old hasn’t cooked up wild plans to stay up all night and catch the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus in the act?
Some tests are ridiculously difficult to pass. Others, impossible to fail. And sometimes, perhaps more often than we think, the test doesn’t test what we think it does, and the results don’t matter one whit.
What have we tested, do you think? What evidence exists, what proof? And what were the results?
Did the sky fall? Did the bodies pile up in the street? Did the monster prevail? Did a tiny pearly white tooth get replaced by a coin and colourful stone? Or did you find unusual footsteps in the snow?
Are all we have to show for it empty bottles and a greasy cutting board? Or did we come away with something more — full hearts, joy, laughter? Did we test our resolve or confirm our humanity? Did we collectively uncloak the invisible but fearsome mythical creature or come together in a swell of human love and kindness to shine light into the dark and bring faith and friendship to each other?
You must decide for yourself, and that can be frightening.
I know only my own story, my own evidence. I’ve come away from this experience with deeper convictions and a stronger faith in the goodness of my fellow man, and it has given me courage to believe more deeply in myself.
Perhaps now is the time to write and manifest the next chapter of the story.
What do you think, based on the evidence?
I don’t vouch for the veracity of this. There has been more than one such occasion — sometimes there was sliced kolbász, sometimes a feisty five-year-old in tow. The spirit of the facts are accurate even if the facts, strictly speaking, are not.
Please, keep writing and sharing your thoughts. It warms my heart every time I read one of your posts. It gives me comfort and brings back memories of all the wonderful nights we had in front of the fireplace, sipping wine, talking and laughing. ❤️
I was right there...everywhere you went. Wonderful pictures.