Believe
Saturday night is date night here, usually entailing a visit to the grocery store or food coop, Chinese takeout and a rented video—or DVD, now that we’ve bitten that bullet. New Year’s Eve 2005 was no different except we splurged and went for a New Release, The Polar Express.
We sat quietly in the dark, awed by the graphics, swept along by the fast-paced story. Afterwards, we had our usual discussion. My husband didn’t like that the story was told, as usual, from the middle class white boy’s point of view, and the black girl and the poor boy took second and third place. I said, yeah, I hear you, but that was the story that writer told, it was his story, his point of view, a story he needed to tell and that only he could tell. The same story told by the black girl or the poor kid would be a different story, someone else’s story.
The story I wrote about Emma Grace was my story, a story I needed to tell and that only I could tell, a story of a sheltered girl’s discovery of all the colors and facets of the world and the revealing of the not-so-perfect story of her past and present.
Only Alice Walker could have written The Color Purple, only Maya Angelou could have written I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, only Eldridge Cleaver could have written Soul on Ice and only Stephen King could have written Carrie.
Really good stories, regardless of who writes then, have something for many people. The Polar Express, a middle class white boy’s story, says to me that your belief in something can make it happen, and that isn’t just a childhood fantasy but something you can use your whole life. He wrote a book of his story that is a well-respected classic and other white men made a movie of it that is on the way to becoming a classic too, seen by millions—kids and adults—probably of many colors and cultures. It’s up to each of us to put ourselves in that seat in the sleigh, next to Santa Claus or Tinkerbelle or Gandhi or Hildegard of Bingen or Mother Teresa or whoever, to decide what we would want the first gift of Christmas to be, believing not only that we are deserving of receiving that gift but to know that we have already received our own unique gifts from whatever higher power or supreme or magical being we lean on and look up to.
Each of us is a gift, each of us has gifts that only that one individual has, and only that one individual brings to the world, and to keep those gifts we must share them.
That night I had a dream of an old house on a lovely warm afternoon, with me moving about an idyllic backyard scene among people and faeries. They were making and repairing musical instruments, and playing them and singing. There were magical stones that the faeries and some of the people were doing magical things with. A few of the people doubted that they could do these things so I worked with them, showed them how, showed them that believing you can is the most important part of the process and together we made it work, again and again.
The scene changed and I was watching a car race. There was a big accident and a woman driver was mangled and dismembered, but she immediately began to put herself back together.
That night I was driving through town after helping my husband paint his office. I stopped at a light, then started turning left slowly when it changed because my dog was riding shotgun as her back seat was folded down to accommodate a ladder and other painting equipment. As I looked down the street where I was headed, a big white SUV came barreling toward me. My mind stopped--is this right? Is my light green? The driver answered my question by slamming on the brakes and fishtailing on the wet pavement all the way through the intersection, then speeding on down the highway. I sat watching, dazed.
I thought--near-miss. But no, it was a near-hit. Because I was being more cautious than usual, going slower compared to my usual zipping along, we were safe, not crunched, not dead. And though I hadn’t had to do anything beyond that, no slamming on brakes or swerving, no adrenaline rush, and there was no impact, it was like a volume of the story of my life slammed shut and another volume opened. And though there was no huge wreck like in my dream, I felt like I was putting my dismembered self back to together as I continued, slowly, on my way.
I thought about it all evening and have continued to think about it since. I’m grateful to be alive and well, to be going about my mundane daily activities, to be sitting here writing about it. I call these ta-da moments. I’ve had many and after each one I feel I’ve climbed a little higher up on the mountain of my life, and sometimes I think, okay, this is it! This is the top for sure, clear sailing now, problems all gone . . . Not. Oh, look. There’s this huge valley and an impossibly high peak on the other side of it.
But in my middle age I can see--sometimes--that there is no top, as least not while I’m still living, that life is up and downs, and each is a story to tell, to write, to learn from, to share. I’ve learned you can’t tell anyone anything and no one can tell me anything but I do learn from other peoples’ lives and stories, so the best thing I can do is write these stories of my life, these stories that are born and grow and live in me. And I’ve learned to not try to tell anyone who they are or what they need to do but to tell them only, believe, believe in yourself, believe in whatever power or magic that is in you, in the world.
I had another dream recently in which a friend and I were walking along a garden path and he said these paths are stories. We’re all here together, moving along our parallel or adjacent or perpendicular paths, and though no two are the same, we move together for a while, and we can cheer each other on, lend a hand over a rocky rushing river, and share the stories of our lives. We can believe.
© copyright Maggie Wilson, 1/5/2006
