My mother is beautiful & glamorous & everything I want to be. 

She tells me stories about lovely princesses with evil mothers who wish them dead.  

About ladies so soft they can be bruised by a pea.  

About the little girl she used to be with her own mother

because in order to know who we’ll become

we have to know our mother and to know our mother

we have to know her mother and so on: 

Once upon a time there was a lonely old woman who baked a gingerbread man that came to life.  She was thrilled but not that surprised because she knew that if she was patient and prayed very hard sooner or later something magical would happen and she wouldn’t be lonely anymore.  So she praised God and as she did so the gingerbread man got up and ran away.

Once upon a time there was a woman who wanted to be wise so she picked her food from the tree of knowledge, but the knowledge was very bitter so when her husband wasn’t looking she threw it all up so that she could get on with her life.

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived all alone at the top of a tall smooth mountain made of glass.  No one could ever climb it but the princess lived in fear because guys were always trying anyway. 

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Red Riding Hood who was eaten by a wolf, but then a hunter rescued her from the wolf’s stomach and suddenly she had special powers: she could feel the energy of the earth, predict hurricanes and old people wanted her to sit with them as they died.

Once upon a time there was a little girl whose mother was very thin & glamorous.  This mother never sat down with a plate of food and ate from it.  Never.  Instead, at dinner time she would serve her daughter and then pace around the little girl's chair, grabbing a French fry or brussel sprout or dipping her finger into gravy and bringing it to her lips.  The mother thought the little girl was so cute that she could just eat her up too, lip, smack and chew, bake her up crispy crusty crackly.  But the mother loved her little girl very much so she never did eat her, and besides that she was on a diet anyway.

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Wendy who Peter and all the lost boys came to because they wanted mothering and no one else would do it.  The little girl thought it might be fun and so she cradled them in her arms & sang them to sleep but then she got tired and wished that she was the baby and someone else was the mommy. So she went back home.

Once upon a time a radiant woman appeared in the sky as bright as the sun brilliant glowing beautiful with the earth at her feet and stars around her face.  She cried with love for all of us and asked “Am I not your mother?”  But most people didn’t notice her so they went on feeling lonely and unloved forever.

Once upon a time there were teenage punk girls with the sides of their heads shaved, grimaces on their lips, manic panic in their hair.  They became Poe’s Ravens, confirming everyone's worst fears, holding us hostage with their mysterious defiance.  “Nevermore!” they stared at us blanky, disinterested.  “Nevermore!” they drove us mad.  And when Red Riding Hood’s wolf approached them on their way to grandma’s house, “Screw you” they said, calmly and quietly.

Once upon a time there was a woman named Lillith who left her husband Adam because he mistreated her and when he re-married he treated the new wife just as bad.  Lillith tried to slither back to the garden and warn Eve but instead she was caught and banished to the sea forever.  Sometimes she manages to rise up through our mirrors and into the eyes of little girls who are looking too hard at their own beauty.  Some can see her as a flicker in their eye.

Do you realize that if Red Riding Hood hadn’t said to the wolf, “my grandma is sick and alone and she lives right this way” then the wolf would never have eaten either of them and the moral of the story is Just Keep Quiet About Your Family Problems!

But

it was Red Riding Hood’s mother who sent her daughter into the wolf infested woods in the first place, so maybe the Real moral of the story is It Is Always The Mother’s Fault.

© 2010 Caroline Marie