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Lone
Wolf
Howl:
THE LITTLE THINGS LEAD TO GIANT REVELATIONS
(Originally
published
in
Cochrane Times: November 30, 2005)
Today my girls climbed out of their bunks some 20 minutes after I had opened my eyes to the morning, the older one taking time to make both beds before they ran down the hall to mine. I made them waffles with whipped cream and fruit, the younger wanting more of the former, and both taking too much syrup. By 9:30 a.m. we were in the car and on our way to the Christmas Fair which is not called a Christmas Fair anymore but, simply, a celebration of joy. We arrived and stepped full force into a memory: an old one for me – soft and sad – but a new one for my girls. We were there for a number of reasons, not the least of which was my annual participation in the Story Garden at 11 a.m. For two 50 cent tickets, you could sit and hear a story in one of the classrooms (a pleasant enough activity to sandwich between candle dipping and apple peeling), and I was the storyteller for the first slot of the day. It being winter (sort of), and Christmas (sort of), I told a sort of winter, Christmas story: The Selfish Giant, by Oscar Wilde. It’s a beautiful story on many levels, and it was especially nice for me to tell it to an audience who appreciates and understands both beauty and story, and to share it with my daughter who has heard it before but still sat still and quiet as the tale unfolded. The giant lives to a ripe old age in the story, and his exodus from this world is handled so softly, so sadly by Wilde that one cannot help but sigh, even weep at the closing of his life. The children still come by that afternoon, to play and sing in the giant’s garden, only to find their old friend and benefactor lying dead beneath his peach tree, covered in blossoms of pearl and pink. After our time at the Fair, we drove to my parent’s home in Ranchlands, enjoyed some of my mom’s hearty minestrone soup, and proceeded to the cemetery in Beiseker where their youngest son (my youngest brother) is buried. Unlike Wilde’s giant, he did not live to what we would call a ripe old age, but his exodus from this world was equally as soft, equally as sad as any fairy tale character, and to tell of it would bring the same sighs, perhaps the same tears, as would any fairy tale story. Mom reminded me that the 19th of November, in addition to being the anniversary of my brother’s death, was the anniversary of her mother’s birth. A coming and a going, a beginning and an ending, merged as one by the same date. What brought it all together, I suppose… where art and life spent a moment in each other’s company that afternoon, was in the carefree playfulness of my girls, climbing the tombstones as though they were trees, racing across the greens as if they were in some anonymous giant’s garden, with the wall knocked down and the autumn wind dancing in their hair. I don’t know who that giant is… whether he’s away visiting with an ogre, or long since dead, or whether he exits at all outside the realm of the imagination. I don’t think anybody knows. Many believe they know, but belief is not knowledge, it’s belief. Strange how we confuse the two. To the one who came into the world upon this day so long ago, I thank you. To the one who left the world upon this day, I miss you. And to the one who felt it necessary upon this day to explain who the giant was and where I can find His house on Sunday morning, I ask you to be silent. You tried to stuff a gigantic story into a tiny fact, but only smudged a day – so perfectly soft and sad – with your good intentions.
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