Fairytales

It seems a logical place to start would be my childhood. That generally explains a lot about people. Not that I’m particularly logical, but a girl has to start somewhere. And our childhood certainly explains a lot about my sisters and I- in very different ways, but all the same it explains a lot.


I had a fairytale childhood… and I mean that quite literally, a childhood full of tales of fairies. When I was about four, and my sisters were three and one and a half (We were all born within three and a half years. We can discuss my parents’ fertility later.), we lived in a very old house in Abbeville, Louisiana. Mama was trying to get all three of us to take a nap at once, not a simple feat. There was a big vine growing in the bedroom window, and Mama told us the story of the Fairy Vine. This was a magical vine, a vine where the fairies played Chutes and Ladders, or something of the sort. It was also a vine by which fairies granted the wishes of little girls while they napped. We were enthralled, naturally. Little girls are easily enthralled, and we had the most enthralling of mothers! We made wishes, apparently for beautiful jammies. And they appeared. Mine were blue. Beautiful silky jammies with lace.

I can follow your thoughts here. I’ve had them too- in one of my lapses in judgment when I thought everything could be explained. She prompted our wishes, she ran to the store while we napped… something. First, let me tell you plainly that my Mama never prompted any of our thoughts. She loved our thoughts too much, she lived for them. She, both of my parents actually, were always very careful to allow us our own thoughts, our own dreams, our independence. You’ll have to take my word for it, but she never prompted our thoughts. And if she HAD prompted our thoughts, they would have involved glitter anyhow. Second, you likely haven’t lived in Abbeville, Louisiana. It doesn’t, or didn’t when we lived there, have stores that sell silk, frilly pajamas for little girls. And even if they had, it would have been blocks from our home and Mama would never have left us alone. Aside from having the foresight to believe in fairies, she was also a very good mother.

So after our naps, when we woke up, there were our beautiful new jammies at the bottom of the bed. Just waiting for us. And we were ecstatic. I wish I remembered what we did when Daddy got home! I can only imagine how we relayed our story to him.

And that was how all of our childhood was- full of fun and games and playing and fairytales. On rainy days, Mama put on her roller skates and roller-skated us, in turns, up and down the halls. On sunny days our dollar store swimming pool was filled with the shipping peanuts that came in my Daddy’s huge boxes of veterinary medical shipments and we “swam” in them in the front yard. Our house was full of stink bugs in the evenings when Daddy got home from work and he would spend an hour or so chasing “Dee-Buhs” around the house and getting them out as a game. During thunderstorms Daddy pulled a mattress out onto the front porch and covered us with blankets while we watched the storm blow by. While Christmas shopping for Mama, we played games of chase up and down and down and up the escalators.

Like I said, fairytale childhood. And I chose to believe.