A pumpkin, a couple of mice and a handful of splinters?

I wonder what went through Cinderella’s mind when the clock struck midnight and she looked down and suddenly found herself in rags, with a pumpkin and a bunch of mice… and how Gepetto felt when he loved Pinocchio with all he had but when he hugged his little boy, the splinters still stuck in his hands?  Did Little Red Riding Hood ever venture into the woods again – did she look at all wolves with suspicion after the unfortunate incident at her Grandmother’s house?

I am beginning to think that it is all about yesterday, today or tomorrow… like the sweet smelling shrub that flowered outside my late gran’s bedroom window. I think that is one of our greatest weaknesses as women – we tend to get trapped in the wrong filter. 

I guess the secret is to face reality as it is right now – with the pumpkin, mice and tattered dress – not as it was or as we would like it to be.  That is where the difficulty lies.  We tend to associate Cinderella with the glass slipper, the beautiful ball gown and the coach with the footman but we forget that at some point in the story, she lost the magic.  She reverted to a plain Jane with dirt on her tattered dress, tousled hair and old shoes – sitting in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a lousy pumpkin and some mice.

So what do we tend to do when we look down and our ballgown has morphed into a tatty dress? We become like Gepetto – we work even harder – we love Pinocchio even more believing that if we give all our love and all of ourself he may just lose his woody demeanour, stop lying and become magically alive.  We give more and more and more of ourselves in the process.  Suddenly Cinderella finds herself trapped in the tatty dress with the pumkin and mice with no glass slippers in sight – because we focus so much on fixing something we imagine that we did to break the magic spell.  In truth though, Cinderella did nothing to break the spell – it was beyond her control.  But we forget – we tend to try harder and harder and the more we try the more the pumpkin becomes just a miserable pumpkin.

There is much to learn from Cinderella – we all focus on the fairytale outcome – the prince on his white horse bearing the slipper.  We tend to forget that Cinderella had to scrub toilets and take out the trash for some time while the dimwitted prince was looking for the girl with the right shoe size.  Isn’t it interesting too that the one thing that made her different from all the other girls in the land was that she did not desperately try to fit the shoe – she knew it was her shoe and she knew he would find her eventually.  Interestingly enough the prince was not interested in the other girls who all tried to squeeze their feet into the glass slipper… but like a typical male he gave them all a go to see if it would fit! 

I’m beginning to think that most men are like cats with a piece of string. Forgive me if I sound patronizing here… when was the last time you watched a cat play with a piece of string?  If you jiggle the string and move it away from the cat – the cat will pursue it and play…but leave it alone – make it available – just let it lie there -  the cat loses interest and starts licking itself.  It looks down at you with scorn as only a cat can do.  There is a lesson here.

Why is it that women tend to lose ourselves in relationships?  Why is it that we tend to internalize any negativity and search for any flaw or error within ourselves when in most cases it is not ours to bear?  Is it because we tend to define ourselves in terms of the success of our relationships while men define their success in terms of their careers or material wealth?  All too often I think we use the men in our lives as mirrors but all too often the mirrors reflect a warped and distorted image – and as a result – Cinderella looks down and sees only rags and tattered shoes. 

I am beginning to wonder if there is a Cinderella in each of us – when we sit down in the middle of the road in the darkness with a smelly pumpkin  and a couple of mice – do we forget that?  Do we take the time to look inward and see the potential there?  Do we trust that inner sense of knowing – you know when the shoe fits – Cinderella did.  She also knew that although she hated scrubbing toilets – she would wear her glass slipper again once he finally wisened up and found her.  I wonder if the prince didn’t develop a midlife crisis while he was looking for her – he figured he may as well play the field and sow some wild oats while he is about it? 

I think we tend to become so despondent and think that our pumpkin will only be a pumpkin and that the mice will eventually become breakfast for the neighbour’s cat.  When we are feeling rejected and defeated – why do we lose faith in our inherent latent potential for future happiness.  Why does Little Red Riding Hood become a cynic?

Perhaps it is because we develop Gepetto syndrome… He loved Pinocchio beyond all proportion.  The typical Pygmalion effect – did Galathea or Pinocchio appreciate or realize the extent of the love and effort that Pygmalion and Gepetto had invested into bringing them to life?  I think not.  Pinocchio was a spoilt brat with no appreciation or consideration for poor Gepetto.  Do men not do that when we tend to jump through hoops and perform circus tricks to keep them happy and give beyond all reasonable measure? 

It is only when Pinocchio was swallowed by the whale and sitting the smelly abyss of his own doing that he suddenly realized how much Gepetto meant to him.  Appreciation dawned on him and he became human.  I guess it is a cliché – but painfully accurate.  Sometimes you have to hold a cubic zirconia to realize that you discarded the Cullinan diamond.

Yes, I lost my slipper.  Yes, my dress is dirty and tattered and I have a pumpkin and a couple of mice with me in the middle of nowhere right now.  But I still have one glass slipper in my pocket.  He has the other one and some day he will discover that the glass slipper is not a one size fits all.  Hopefully he doesn’t shatter it before it is too late.  

Pinocchio can still become whole and perhaps my torn dress will turn into a ball gown some day.  But that is tomorrow’s filter.  Today’s filter says I must find the switch for today – hope, strength, faith and gratitude for the fact that the pumpkin isn’t broccoli and the mice aren’t rats.  Only when those switches are flicked, will the string move and then the cat will suddenly stop licking itself and look at me with that curious intensity and move into position to pounce.  so for now, I am picking splinters from my fingers while Pinocchio's nose grows.

Because God sees...

A few days ago  I walked past St Andrew’s Cathedral at Town Hall station and I stopped for a while.  I sat there and looked at this structure and thought about all the beautiful cathedrals I have admired, sat in and studied.  I wondered by myself why it is that I am so fascinated by these shrines to a God that I am not always so sure of.  I wondered what it is that draws me to them and why it is that there is something in them that speaks to me directly.

As I sat there and looked at the intricate masonry on the nave, I found myself wondering about the stonemasons who carved the delicate lacework on the Duomo in Florence and the Notre Dame in Paris.  We know who the architects and the sculptors of the monumental  key pieces are but no-one knows who the lowly mason was who sat there and lovingly carved the faces of angels and gargoyles.  Suddenly, a lot made sense to me. 

The blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into a room while I am on the phone and ask me a question.  Inside I am thinking “Can’t you see I am on the phone?” Obviously not.  No one sees if I am on the phone, or cooking, or doing the laundry, doing the ironing or knitting a scarf because sometimes I think no-one can see me at all.  I sometimes feel like the invisible mom and that I am only a pair of hands – nothing more.  Can you fix this?  Can you tie this?  Can you open this?  There are times when I am not a pair of hands, I’m a clock to ask, “What time is it?”; I’m a dictionary to answer “What does ‘ephemeral’ mean?”; I’m a car to order “Okay, please pick me up at 20:30.”  

At times I am certain that these hands once held books and my eyes studied literature and History of Art and graduated cum laude, but that it somehow disappeared into the peanut butter I spread on the kids’ sandwiches never to be seen again.

Sometimes, I sit quietly and watch others who all seem to be put together so well and it is hard not to compare and feel pretty pathetic at times.  But today, while thinking of the cathedrals of Europe, I thought that I should rather consider myself a builder, like one of those masons.   I think I stumbled across four truths in those cathedrals:

·        

       Firstly, no-one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names.

·         Secondly, those lowly masons gave their whole lives for a work they would never see completed (especially if you think that structures like the Duomo and Notre Dame took three centuries to complete!)

·         Thirdly, they made great sacrifices and expected no credit for their efforts.   The passion of their building was fuelled by faith that the eyes of God or some higher power saw everything.

I thought of the delicate carvings of birds under the eaves of some of the big cathedrals in Europe and I wondered whether anyone ever asked the mason why he was putting so much work into carving a delicate bird into a beam that no one will ever see.  And I think he would have replied, “Because God sees”.

I did not have a sudden epiphany or religious experience, no.  But it was as if something whispered to me “I see you.  I see the sacrifices you make every day, when no-one else around you does.    No act of kindness you have done, no button you’ve sewn on, no muffin you have baked, is too small to notice and smile over.  You are building a great cathedral but you can’t see right now what it will become.”

Perhaps I should consider myself as a builder, as one of those lowly masons who showed up at a job they would never see finished, to work on something that their name would never be on.  Perhaps I should just believe that I am building something great when nobody sees. Perhaps that is why no cathedrals will ever be built in our lifetime.  Mainly because there are so few people who are willing to sacrifice to that degree.  Perhaps that is what love really is too.

I feel like the mason carving the bird in the beam. I have always believed that love means giving of yourself as much as you have to give.  When I give I feel happiest which is why I have always got so much pleasure out of spoiling him in very way I could think of.  Because when you have something to give to someone, you have a sense of worth and a sense of value.  You are not merely filling a space – you matter.  You are carving a bird into a beam that no-one really sees.  

In the four years we have had, we have built something beautiful.  I could see the cathedral taking shape, I loved the grace of the arches and the cool tranquility of its cloisters.  I cannot just put down my tools because there has been a complication or a change in the architectural design.  I have put my whole heart and soul into this building.   I don't know if I really want to start digging new foundations for a new edifice somewhere else.  It is hard work and frankly I don’t know if  I have the strength to start again and after another four years to find myself faced by being told to start digging all over again. I want to finish building it – even if it takes a long long time.  At least there is progress and I am building something.  Brunneleschi did not give up when faced with the challenge of finding a way to deal with the roof of the Duomo. Instead of scrapping it and starting again, he looked at it again and found a creative and ingenious solution to his problem.   It took him a long time, but he managed to build the most spectacular dome in history. If oysters can create something as magnificent as a pearl from an irritation caused by a grain of sand, imagine what we can do with love.  

Perhaps one day, you will see that an imperfect mason is someone you could have taken  in your backpack when you go to war.  I don’t know.  At this stage though, I have no choice but to walk away from you and hope that the birds on the beams, and the stony faces of the angels I have lovingly carved for you in the cloisters will tell you something of the love I have for you in days to come.  I believe that the spirit of your love for me still wanders through the coolness of the cloisters in your heart at night even if you choose not to express it.  I think you still hear it humming quietly in your soul when you are alone.

At times my invisibility feels like an affliction.  But it is not a disease that is erasing my life.  It is a cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness.  It is possibly an antidote to my strong stubborn pride.  As a mother I am also building a cathedral.  I pray that one day the world will marvel not only at what we have built but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women like me.

We never know what our finished products will turn out to be because of our perseverance.  Please don’t walk away from something that is really beautiful and which can bring a lot of joy, love and happiness in your life because of current difficulties.  Nothing gained easily is ever really worthwhile.  Let this grain of sand grow into a beautiful lustrous pearl in the years to come.