Elisabeth Writing

“Tell me the story again,” I demanded, pulling my cabbage-rose duvet up to my chin and snuggling deeper into the mattress. My mother, half-asleep herself, barely stifled a yawn.

“The one about the faerie queens, Alexandria and Elizabethan?”

I wrinkled my nose. “No, the one about you and daddy.”

My mother sighed, tucking her blonde bob behind her ear. “Again?”

I nodded, solemn. It was my favorite story, and I never got tired of hearing it.

“Ok. Once upon a time…”

Once upon a time there was a ranch for kids who were “disadvantaged” or “troubled.” The people who worked there were characters themselves, but all of them were committed to helping the kids and teens in their care. Two of the people who worked there were a man named Tall John and a woman named Betty. And when Tall John first laid eyes on Betty, his heart was lost. Betty with the golden hair and kind smile, Tall John with the mischievous grin and twinkling eyes. It was love at first sight… and when John saw three red-tailed hawks circling above them both one day, he knew: this was it. They were soulmates. For Betty, it was watching John take a young boy onto his knees, and brushing his tears away, giving him the only comfort he could. But in the end… it was meant to be.

This was the story I was raised on, right along with my mother’s milk. I watched my father tuck my mother against him, resting his chin on her head and swaying with her to the music that no one else heard. This was the story that sustained me, when the boys in my class peeked over the bus seats at me, curled into myself and drawing in my notebook, and began to taunt me for my hair, my teeth, my general weirdness. If I can just ignore them, and pretend that I’m in a love story where I am strong and beautiful, I will be ok. If I can just get home without crying, I’ll ask for the story again, and I’ll feel better.

I bury my face in peonies and daisies, hoping that if I linger long enough, perhaps some of that beauty will rub off on me. I gather friends around me, fellow misfits, or at the very least the people who want to sit with me and hear my stories. I don’t mind spinning them, even if I am pulling them out of my own innards and making them into sparkles and stardust; even if it hurts. I want to pull down the moon on a string and parade it around, to hear the applause and acclaim, to feel wanted and loved and seen. Stories are my bread and butter – reading them and telling them.

I comfort myself with a story about a pegasus as I ignore that I am never the girl being chased on the playground by the cute boys, that I have to break off chunks of myself, like precious gemstones, if I want to be acknowledged. Maybe if I stopped drawing faeries, or trying to run faster than everyone on the playground, or if I remembered to brush my hair, or stopped pretending to run away, waiting for someone to come after me.

If my parents could find true love, didn’t that mean everyone could? If my father, who had been hurt so much and so often, could heal and change, help others do the same, and then find the love of his life, didn’t that mean fairytales could be real? This was my own, real-life fairytale example. I saw how hurt my father was; not damaged, but truly in pain. It still came out, sometimes: in his darkening eyes, the guitar of my mother’s he broke with his own two hands, the way he’d cry and put his head in his hands as if some demon was in there, squirming in his brain, hurting him. There was a fight mom and dad had, the other day, that made me start sobbing. I got in the middle of them and shoved, begging them to stop, trying to mediate. I only wanted to help, and to stop the arguing. I hated the fights. I hated when he threatened to leave, and I curled under the table and softly wept.

But that wasn’t a version I often saw. And, didn’t all heroes have a troubled past? Even in the books I read, these things were hinted at. Besides, the dad I knew was the one who put me on his handlebars and rode his bike around “Little Beach,” laughing as my hair streamed into his neck and chest. My dad was the one who clapped as my little sister did her tap-dance routine or played the recorder or threw out snarky comments about getting a new bike if her old one was stolen. My dad was the peace-keeper.

And my mom was the story-teller. She was the one who gathered me up when I cried about feeling so alone, so lost, even at this tender age. I felt like an alien, I told her, and she said, no: a faerie, like the ones in my vivid and colorful dreams. My mom was the stability, the glue, that held our family together.

My sister was the mischief-maker, and someone I loved but didn’t understand.

And me? I didn’t really know my place, or who I was, or who my friends were.

Maybe that was the problem.