Growing up is really hard to do. And at different stages of our lives, we have a shortlist, maybe a longish shortlist, of what we “must have done,” we imagine, in order to qualify for having “grown up.” As life happens, we adjust the lists. Maybe the “fairy tale dream” gets shelved or just drops off somewhere, possibly irretrievable, or so we think. But the thing with fairy tale dreams is that they tend to haunt us, for better or for worse.
September is a great time for contemplating our current list for what it means to us to have “grown up.” The kingdom of summer might linger a little, at least in memory, as we learn to wave goodbye, often with a tinge of sadness.
And with the cooling temperatures of coming autumn we ask ourselves, “How am I doing with my hopes? How do I want to grow this coming year?” And maybe we dare to whisper to ourselves, “What aspects of my fairy tale dream have already happened—and might yet happen?”
As I said in my August blog about my new fiction book, Letters to Annie: A Grandmother’s Dreams of Fairy Tale Princesses, Princes, & Happily Ever After, this is not only the coming-of-age story of Annie for the first 25 years of her life where her grandmother, Omi, chronicles their journey together, this is also the coming-of-age story of Omi. Omi is lucky: not only has she had amazing blessings in her 63 years at which time Annie is born, she gets to forge a close relationship with her one grandchild until she reaches the ripe age of 88, still healthy and hale. Who gets that? (Let’s leave this question and our reactions aside for now.)
At age 63, Omi is definitely in “autumn” when Annie is born but has this extensive season of grace into advanced winter to discover how she has responded to the extravagant gift of life. With each letter she writes she realizes more that she is writing toward her own death. She’s trying to say the things that matter to her while she still can, and say them in such a way that Annie might be able to hear her (at the time and maybe when she is gone).
So what has this grandmother learned? As an aging senior, definitely well beyond many people’s hills, what does she think she knows that’s possibly worth passing on? How might she ease Annie’s way in life? And how might the act of writing to her beloved Annie help Omi as she contemplates her own long life?
Here are some things that Omi discovers in her coming-of-age story:
Time is an enemy, but also a friend.
If what the best of fairy tale has to offer is in our hearts, as Tolkien puts it, this glimpse of “Joy beyond the walls of the world,” then time can surely feel like the enemy that cuts us off from what, as we feel in our hearts, should never end. Death is that last enemy to be overcome (1 Corinthians 13:26). But time is also this gift which has allowed Omi to grow through her own childhood to young adulthood and far beyond: and now to remember who she was and still is and still wants to become. She is seasoned: she’s fought many battles, she’s won many victories. She has wept and laughed, fallen and danced again, and in the end, in the big picture, can pretty much “call it all good.” Omi knows there is a grace that journeys with us, blesses us, redeems us.
Her story is part of a much larger story.
Omi has had time to consider her own life, and now the life of Annie, in light of the lives of their ancestors: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Through Annie’s promptings, Omi gets to face her own fears and how the larger story of their family legacy continues to speak wisdom into her heart. Omi is not a lone ranger; Omi is a player in this larger story, and if she plays her part anyway half right, learning from her own fears and failures, then, well, courage and hope can rise. There is indeed a baton for Omi to pass along to Annie and doing so the best way she can matters (see Letter 12).
She can’t fix a single thing.
Well, wow, that’s a terrible thought—or is it? Aren’t we supposed to know what to do to make things better? Get smarter? Prevail over confusion? The idea that you can’t fix anything, not yourself, not anyone else, flies in the face of a culture that esteems the “You’ve got this” message. But through Annie, Omi comes face-to-face with all the times she’s blown it, past and present (okay, not all of the times, because who could stand knowing that?). In Letter 17, Annie’s rage brings Omi smack up against her own battles with having been a selfish pig and lashing out in rage. In Letter 23, Omi writes, “One thing I came to learn—and am still learning—is that I cannot fix myself or anyone or any situation. That job belongs to the One who can.”
But instead of “not being able to fix a single thing” being a cop-out, Omi has been learning that good change happens when we look for the grace that covers a multitude of sins. Omi remembers more often now that she can’t make herself better (because she’s “a good person”), that she can’t control situations, that she can’t change people. She’s still learning that in the act of letting go she becomes available to the grace waiting to do its work in her and others.
When Omi is a mess, there is help for her. When other problems arise, Omi isn’t exactly off the hook either—she for sure is a burden-bearer. But she has freedom in the confidence that Great Good is coming. Omi’s maturation includes still learning to release her fear and egotism so that the Great Good that is always coming, as George MacDonald puts it, can have its way with her and with what she and others face (see Letter 32).
Love.
In a world badly hurting and divided, Omi learns love. When all seems to fail, love. When her heart seems broken beyond repair, love. When the happily-ever-after dream seems a dreadful cheat, whether through deception or death itself, love.
Love—really? What is it? humanity has asked throughout time. How do you know it’s love?
Letters to Annie has been described as “a love letter written for all of us.” Yes, thank you Carolyn Curtis for putting it like that! Because the theme of the book is “Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8). (Gosh, that famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, bears regular rereading.)
Omi’s coming-of-age story includes these lessons and more. Now that she’s 88, let’s ask Omi our September question: “Are you grown up now?”
Omi smiles a little, with moist eyes, and answers, “Sort of, yes, sure. I like to think so, at least. Man, it’d be pretty awful if I hadn’t learned a thing all these precious years!”
Omi fumbles for words: “But, uh . . . I think you’re asking me if I’m there now, where I wanted to be, at my high age?”
Then she laughs out loud, and says, “And, well, yes. I’ve so much to be grateful for! It’s all been extraordinarily wonderful! I don’t mean, of course, that nothing hard or horrid has ever happened. I hope I’m not lying to you. My memory still serves me rather well, just so you know. . . .
“But, am I there yet? Goodness, that reminds me of when we’re kids and asking, ‘Are we there yet?’ You see, I’m still journeying. Didn’t you know? I ain’t there yet! (Yeah, I still really and totally love slang—in moderation.) I still need to exercise patience and, oh dear, from all I’ve learned, it doesn’t get easier. I’m growing up the best I can, and as the Good Book says, I won’t ‘get there’ until I get to the Other Side. Footnote: when I get there, I have the distinct feeling that I get to start growing up all over again. Boy, am I glad for that! Doing it right, at last, then. . . . Does that answer your question?”
Okay, my hope for readers is this: that the gems from the best of fairy tales can help you to travel better through your own coming-of-age stories. I hope you’ll enjoy rediscovering what you already know and find yet more for your journey!
To learn more about fairy tales, how we share them, their impact, and more, remember to pick up your copy of Letters to Annie.
Order Letters to Annie at FriesenPress, Amazon, or through your local bookstore.
Sign up to receive my blog posts on my website:
Follow me on Social Media:
Watch for my October blog: “A Thank You Note.”
This Advent, in the midst of my end-of-semester professor’s grading of student papers (all so interesting and worthy), in the aftermath of torrential rains that have recently hammered and flooded parts of my province of British Columbia with a vengeance unimagined by most of us, and just in the midst of a very hurting and divided world, well, I pause to consider a marvellous event that happened last Advent. A space for gratitude. Our Advent miracle. With my wonderful colleagues, Drs. Sara L. Pearson and Laura N. Van Dyke, I co-edited and published a book that saw the light of day this month one year ago! In the midst of many things, the Covid crisis being one of them, this book came to birth in December 2020: The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada. Twenty-seven chapters from contributors.
Amen to that. This book, like all good things, took time. If you tend to impatience, like me, then you’ll know all about that jerking at the tether when things don’t happen according to your preferred schedule. The proper unfolding of events in the twin tether of time and space is not quite our favourite idea. But then, oh, glorious, just when you think something is maybe not going to come about at all (because you’re still struggling with impatience, among other rotten things), the miracle happens. The job is done! And you truly know that the energies invested which you thought were yours solo (lone ranger problem), but were mightily infused with the heavenly source of all energy, and then, ta-da! the perfect opening of doors followed—all this birthed the miracle. In hindsight, it happened faster than you could have guessed. (Meanwhile, the naysayers have all vanished, which is what they should have done in the first place—there’s my impatience again. But let’s remember too: naysayers have their place: they can make you stronger and when that happens you get to prove them wrong. Double-bonus. But don’t get too proud about it. Maybe you can’t quite or shouldn’t say, “I told you so.” But you might whisper, “I’m glad I didn’t listen to you, not very much anyway.”) So YAY, the job is done! Big WOW. And you got to have a part in it—how amazing is that! You end up shaking your head, wondering how you got invited into the grand dance. I love how Madeleine L’Engle once said that every book has its own angel, its own perfect time for appearance. (At the moment, I don’t recall whether I heard it in one of her live lectures or read it.)
Bifocal vision marks the end of a youthful era. What has this possibly to do with hope? I suppose leaving one’s youth behind can be a kind of good? (Let’s try to count the ways in which loss also leads to gain.)
Stephen was the first person who invited me to give a keynote address. It was for Oxford, at C. S. Lewis’s Magdalen College, no less. What?! Me?! Oh, what a marvelous time it was, that Oxford conference by the George MacDonald Society in 2014. (You can read a lot of what we thought and said in the book, Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy.)
I have another reason for associating Stephen with bifocal vision. Every time I teach George MacDonald, which is a fair bit, I refer my students to Stephen’s comment on this Victorian author. MacDonald, Stephen said, had “bifocal” vision, meaning that he saw two worlds at once, the temporal and the eternal (“The Two Worlds of George MacDonald”).
So when I walk darkening wintry streets, I want to remember that the weather will change. Stephen’s comment to us that one night also helps me to remember. Frost for a time but not forever. The Great Thaw is coming. The White Witch’s reign is temporary; Aslan will return. And as I walk along I need to see what’s right in front of me as clearly as possible; but I also need to have the long view of life everlasting. The short and the long view—bifocal vision—enables hope.
A few evenings ago my immediate family circle celebrated the beginning of Sukkot, the biblical Feast of Tabernacles or Shelters. As we made our preparations, I contemplated again the first time we did so some years ago. I recalled so vividly the wondrous moment when I put my head back and gazed up through the mini-forest of cut bamboo branches decorating our backyard deck: up through the swaying green fronds into the deep blue autumn sky before sunset, and came awake with this startling thought. “So, this is Sukkot,” I pondered. “So this is why the Israelites were to build booths to dwell in for a week. They were to begin to understand this amazing fact: that the God of the universe had come to tabernacle with them, to dwell with them.” And somehow in that split second the cosmos opened in my heart, even more profoundly in that instant than each lovely Christmas year after year. This God, yes, this God has come to tabernacle with us, with me, now, always. Christmas in October—Christmas always.
Maybe the Lord Jesus really was born during the Feast of Tabernacles. Makes sense. That the God who came to dwell with us would be as precise with His calendar as in all other things. But whether we think of His birth especially on December 25th or in the autumn, let’s focus on the miracle itself: He has come to tabernacle with us, to be with us. No matter what, He is with us in all things, blessing us in the midst of trials, working through all things so that we can enjoy Him forever.
A line from Laura Ingalls Wilder rings true: “I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things in life which are the real ones after all.” And I wonder, in this season of approaching harvest, which sweet, simple, splendid harvest fruits might we notice? Enjoy? Sure, we count what we have lost, and must, but what might we have also gained?
Meanwhile, as we’ve been wisely told, take one day at a time, one moment at a time. And count the joys, keep counting the joys, as we go.
With this basket full of autumn joys, I’m thinking more about how MacDonald’s Princess Daylight, who in spite of the evil spell that was put on her, is “dancing to her own music.” In the end, evil is overcome, as it always is. But here’s the thing: how important it was for Daylight in the long meanwhile of suffering to dance to her own music as much as she could. No, she wasn’t always dancing, but as much as she could dance she did—perseveringly, repeatedly, joyfully. Some days she was just plain too worn and decrepit to dance, and the only thing to do was sleep and, more than that, especially when sleep didn’t come, wait.
This autumn I could pray for a double portion of courage and faith. That’d suit me fine to get it. But right now maybe I’ll just ask for an outbreak of sanity in my own heart, in this hour, on this day. Start where I am. Maybe that’s how to get ready to receive more courage, more faith. And when I can, which is most likely oftener than I suppose, I’ll dance to my own music, celebrating all things bright and beautiful.
Sorrows’ Doors—the portal to deepest truth, deepest joy? What thresholds must I overcome to agree with MacDonald? Suffering, sorrow—this we try to avoid, at all cost, do we not? But that Sorrow is the very doorway I must pass through in order to enter Joy? And therefore should I succeed in avoiding it, or rather ignoring it, I would miss what I most long for? Is the Victorian author right to insist, “As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows”?
My faculty administrative coordinator cheerfully helps me via email even late at night and first thing in the morning.
My first online classes worked beautifully. Maybe not quite technologically perfectly but beautifully. I was pretty much dancing with delight! Why did they work so well? The reason: I had a lot of help from my university community and from my son. So much patience and kindness were shown to me. Who knew that so many people could pull together so quickly, so expertly, so cheerfully? And my classes were fun and inspiring. Now my students could see me at home in my study surrounded by my favourite books, even my wooden giraffe from Kenya (a gift from my daughter) reading a book from where he is perched on the bookcase behind my shoulder. I could feel the wonderful presence of my students as they “zoomed in” from various locations in British Columbia and the United States—and our love, yes—as we talked about wonderful literature that has inspired millions, stories that give us so much of what we need to know.
Monika Hilder 