Little Old Lady … in Waiting

Tag: mother-daughter

  • Embracing the Crone

    “The crone must become pregnant with herself, at last she must bear herself, her third self, her old age, with travail and alone. Not many will help her with that birth.” (No Time to Spare – Ursula K. Le Guin)

    “When howling gale is rattling doors, or call of lonely wolf is heard, or cry of raven on the wing, or crack of frost upon the ground, tis she, tis she, tis she. (Calleach – Siobhan Mac Mahon)

    Less than a week before Christmas, when family matriarchs are customarily exiled to Santa’s sweatshops, wrapping gifts like Edward Scissorhands, and frosting shortbreads until our collective glycemic index reads “critical,” I decided to take a night off from the Christmas chain gang. I ventured out on a dark and stormy night, in the company of a close friend of comparable vintage, to attend a workshop that promised to introduce, depict, and interpret the power and majesty of the Crone, a feminine archetype, traditionally the last in a triad, after maiden and mother.  The Crone, often portrayed in our culture as a warty hag, complete with kerchief and shawl, is cast as the most powerful as well.   A sage, a witch, a guardian, a memory keeper, a storyteller…these are just a few of the crone synonyms we might try on for fit, as we move into this last, magical, and mysterious phase of feminine folklore.

    The workshop was led by a woman who called herself a ceremonialist, a Cailleach, or “veiled one” in Gaelic mythology, who helps people transition through significant life events.  Like so many formative moments in a woman’s life,  it began with a fairy tale and the promise of a little-old-lady felted doll of our own making by night’s end, so we charged our tenuous social batteries, did battle with our homebody hearts, discussed whose eyesight was least perilous for an after dark adventure, packed a journal and a sacred object, as directed (Jesus …will there be sharing), and set off on our quest to Encounter the Crone.

    Sat close to the sea in a small conference room, the wind outside serenaded us like a siren call, a slow whistling sea shanty, and the doors rattled loudly, heralding the night’s import, like the ghost of Christmas past. We were offered tea and invited to sit around a makeshift altar decorated with bones and stones and candlelight.  We added our own holy relics: jewelry passed down from our mothers, artwork, a pinecone, a bird, a doll, the shell of a sea urchin, a heritage Christmas angel, and a witch stone, known for its magical protective properties. We were 12 women together, artists and academics, nurses, and teachers, travelling in the dark, a winter’s walk to honour our experiences, mine for meaning, and navigate together a transformation to feminine elderhood, a privileged freehold of wisdom and authenticity, sovereignty and self-possession. The magic in the room was a palpable thing…not enough to levitate… first time out mind, but strong enough to elevate us all.  I’m certain it surprised no one in the room when the lights went out and we were forced to close our circle prematurely, but not before we built something true and lasting together.

    The fairy tale recited so beautifully by our host was the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, a kind of hybrid Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel.  Our heroine, Vasilisa, is gifted a tiny doll with magical properties from her dying mother, that protects her throughout a perilous journey to safety.  Spoiler alert she lives a full life and eventually returns to her origin story, living out her days as an elder in the forest.   The tale is simple but rich in imagery and metaphor.  We were asked to share the images that lingered in our mind’s eye.  The death scene between mother and daughter and the gift of legacy, chicken legged furniture, the impossible task of finding poppy seeds in dirt, a metaphor for discernment, and a fire torch crafted from a skull, the instrument that leads to the story’s denoument, all had honourable mention.

    For me, the lasting power of the story was not an image but an incantation.  Vasilisa called upon the power of the doll reciting, “Little doll, little doll, drink your milk my dear, and I will pour all my troubles in your ear, in your ear.” The notion of a talisman for the storms of life, a mother’s magic, an enchantment to conjure a place of safety in our darkest hour, when we’re not sure our own strength will hold; to call on the inherited love of our ancestors and open a portal of protection, or peace abiding….definately worth the price of admission. Were we leaving the workshop later that night with such a prize in our possession, a felted doll infused with magic, a protective cloak spun from our collective sacred offerings? What sorcery was this?  I started thinking maybe I should leave the house more often, even as a tempest raged outside, and Christmas at ours, still only half conjured.

    Properly incentivized we turned our attention to working with archetypes.  We chose a role from the alter at the center of our circle. Interestingly no one chose the same archetype.  There were so many wonderful choices.  I passed on Hag, and Old One, Elder and Witch.  Hearth Keeper and Herb Wife didn’t quite fit either.  We had a Weaver and a Word Witch, I remember. My friend, selected Sage.  A new grandmother, she is interested in legacy building and passing down family tradition and wisdom.  I picked Storyteller.  I’ve always been addicted to story.  It’s my preferred way to learn.  For me it’s high art, allowing us to live a thousand lives in one, a talisman against loneliness, a cure for myopia and polarization.

    After sharing our selections and thoughts around the archetype alter, we moved, some of us more tentatively than others, to worktables set up for needle felting, a dangerous, dexterous art, that comes with small sharp stabbing needles and raw wool to be shaped and prodded into small objets d’art, a felted little old lady…in waiting.  I wish I could tell you there was no blood lost but I’m sure I wasn’t the only hag there to stifle a silent scream that night as the needle pieced my presumably pre-loved stabbing pillow, and caught the delicate skin beneath my fingernail.  Maybe the bloodletting is part of the spell, maybe human sacrifice is the elixir that makes the doll magical.  All I know is that I stabbed my doll a thousand times or more before she came to life in my hands and the stabbing was oddly therapeutic (“psycho -killer…qu’est-ce que c’est”). I plan to continue my felt making education and have already created a companion for my doll, but maybe I’ve shared too much. Still, friends are important…even felted friends.

    The power went out when I was attempting to style my doll’s hair.  Every woman will understand the import of such a moment.  Our felting mentors came to the rescue and held cell phone flashlights for us to finish this crucial phase in the work. Suffice to say, I was never so happy to own such unruly, unkept tresses. It was the work of a moment to complete the effect and even in the dark I recognized the crone I held in my hands as my own, a story keeper and maker, a sovereign in the final decades of her reign, confidant in her unique gifts, generous in her attention to those she held dear, and determined to live intentionally, according to her values and passions until her last moments in this realm. 

    I was afraid the storm raging outside would prevent our eclectic circle from sharing our thoughts on the dolls we created. Insatiably curious, I had an almost visceral need to know how the others would answer the last question on the agenda for the  night, “If your inner doll could speak to you tonight, what would she say?”  One doll spoke of cultivating more trickster energy, to seek opportunities to laugh and have fun, another counselled that there was always something new to learn and explore, others said to ask for help and not to imagine we can do it all ourselves, that it’s ok to be messy, to rest, to be steadfast, to practice unconditional self-love, to keep moving, to offer guidance, to stand in the wind, to practice childlike wonder, and to embrace and celebrate all the beauty within.

    I know the doll is just a small, symbolic, hand-built ornament, but it feels so much bigger than that to me. I know we make our own magic, but I also know that there was a wisdom teaching waiting for us in the dark that wintry night, an introduction to “crone-ology,” a threshold for letting go of all that no longer serves us and a turning point in the pages of our story.  You may cackle, but I have plans to build my doll a small house with a door that opens with ease, so whenever I need to hold her close and feel my mother’s magic near, I’ll find her waiting for me there, her spell unbroken, a warm cloak of protection against the storms of life.

  • On Travel and the Importance of Periodically Upending your Setting

    “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.  And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.  We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”  – John Steinbeck

    We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”  – T.S. Elliot

    Hemingway in his novel, A Moveable Feast, wrote, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”  Perhaps that’s because you might be tempted to leave them en-route if you cared for them any less.  Travelling despite all the anticipated splendour and excitement, the unforgettable moments, and the memory making, can be hard graft. Navigating in unknown streets, deciphering foreign languages, walking 20000 steps a day, and surviving only on world class pastries and untested wines…these are mighty challenges indeed and not for the faint of heart, or poorly heeled as it turns out.  Little old lady in waiting to little old lady in waiting, sandals that feel like sneakers, at least pre travel, are still sandals … but honestly can you really be expected to pair Reeboks with a slip skirt after 50?

    The demands of travel and its accompanying tribulations, can test even the most tenured and enduring relationships.  I am recently arrived back on the continent from a tri city European tour with a much-loved Gen Z daughter.  As you may expect, she outwalked, out navigated, and generally out travelled me at every turn.  She slept better, she knew when to stop and insta the roses, and, maybe most importantly, she knew how to work a travel boundary, to carve out space for herself within the confines and constancy of the vacation vortex.

    The donning of air pods was my cue to retreat behind the veil of a novel where we both exhaled deeply into much needed solitide.  Alone, together, we enjoyed daily retreats from the uncensored, stress-born commentary characteristic of unconditional love. That is to say, we, at times, annoyed the “fodors” out of each other.  Still, after a few days at home, each immersed in our own self soothing rituals (Cortados, yoga, pickleball, Netflix), I can, after less than a week in-country, regard our time away as a perfectly sublime excursion with my favourite girl in the world. I have the pictures to prove it. But this trip has got me thinking about the true value of travel and in particular, the part that comes home with us… the part we get to keep.

    Jon Kabot Zinn in his much lauded book, “Wherever you go, there you are,” suggests that no matter how many miles from home you travel, you can’t escape yourself.  Kabot Zinn goes on to say some very powerful things about mindfulness and I can’t recommend his work highly enough, but as to his initial premise … I have some notes. I think travel changes you in significant and lasting ways.  Free from the hamster wheel of our daily lives and the safety of our usual routines, we are forced to navigate differently, to tolerate the stress of unknowing in a foreign landscape, and, if we’re lucky, we may begin a process of unbecoming.  Without the mirror of our usual relationships and roles, who are we…without the reflecting pool of our everyday lives?   Answer…whoever we want to be.

     As a little old lady in waiting, travel is a tremendously liberating experience, far more intoxicating than the constant stream of eye candy and the sugar coating of clean rooms and meals made by another’s hands.  There was wine on occasion, of course, but that wasn’t the real elixir.  Free of the demands of everyday life, walking and watching our principle occupation, my mind was let loose to travel too, with a renewed intellectual energy reminiscent of years long past,when I had only my own path to consider. In Budapest I stood near “the shoes” on the Danube and felt a little disoriented by my freedom.  I was  steeping tea in a strange teapot, brewing a history of ideas that belonged to a much younger, more politicized version of myself. In Vienna, I was bedazzled by beauty at every platz and struck by the metaphorical significance of the German aphorism, “Auch die pause gehort zur musik” (the rest, or silence also belongs to the music). In Prague, the city of Kafka and Kundera, I felt immersed in a dark story book setting and began narrating a conversation inside myself that is still ongoing.

    I think it was David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas, who wrote, “travel far enough, you meet yourself.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Travel never goes completely as expected.  I’m referring here to the missed flights (never… ever book impossible to get concert tickets  within 48 hours of touch down); the too packed itinerary (trying to do everything ensures you’ll enjoy nothing); the high season, overcrowded attractions ( Mona Lisa mosh pit in June); and the disasterous over-hyped venues( read the reviews my friends – the Szechyny  spa in Budapest looks like a refreshing break from the castles and cafes, but in truth it’s a 3rd rate, dirty aquatic center whose thermal pools are tepid at best). The point is the seasoned traveller knows how to wash off the detritus of a disappointing day  with a good pinot grigio and the promise to buy yourself a small objet d’art to remember the day ironically. 

    The planning and negotiation of a journey is a labour of love, an entity all it’s own, but once you land at your destination, all plans are fluid and so must your approach and acceptance of “what is” be,  because fretting, bemoaning and catastrophizing about what a journey “is not”, is  a waste of your travel budget, literally and figuratively.  Maybe if you’re say…a highly structured, control-loving mom, a trip hiccup is an invitation to float (2025 aspirational word of the year) to be frivolous or dare I say, even selfish.  Maybe a daughter takes the helm and suddenly you’re transported to a very pink Viennese café that sells an ice cream called Kardinalschnitten, that apparently corresponds to the colours of the Catholic Church and tastes like God herself is inside.  Before you know it you’re having a serious conversation about God’s existence and what a poor chalice language is when it comes to discussing she who has no name.  Or maybe a highly anticipated classical concert enjoyed on tortuous church pews gives way to a meaningful discussion of uncomfortable life choices, the importance of maintaining a relationship with yourself, and the longing for a space of one’s own; a beautiful setting for your baby to announce her decision to leave home. 

    The point is that without the usual trappings of life, the social cues, the roles and masks we all wear, we are free to reinvent or re-imagine ourselves.  We meet ourselves on distant shores and it’s the best kind of homecoming.  Travel changes you, if you let it.  You are not the same person as when you left, maybe only in small ways but it’s there, this tiny voice inside; the woman who tasted God in an ice cream and decided to cherish herself like someone she loves, or the girl who bought a new watch in Vienna, and knew it was time to leave home.

    The Dalai Lama suggests “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.”  He doesn’t say why but I believe he is prompting us to open our minds and experience all things with new eyes. St Augustine wrote that “the world is a book, and that those who do not travel read only one page.” I think he’s right.  I have been an armchair traveller all my life but have only found opportunity to travel in the real world in the last decade.  It is a different kind of education, a remembrance of who we are, an understanding of our own acquired lens on the world.  Anais Nin knew a secret thing.  She said “we do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”  I read this truth in a book long ago, but I understand it best because of my travels.  I have had many occasions to remove my glasses in transit, en-route, in unfamiliar terrain, to see things with different eyes.  It’s knowing that our glasses are there at all that has the power to transform, to make all that we left at home, new again, and that, I guess, is the real enchantment of travel…a reawakening. It’s the part we get to keep, long after the unpacking.