I am reminded of a certain fairy tale, The Six Swans. In this story the
princess was forced to work her fingers to the bone sewing shirts out of nettle
for her six brothers. They had been turned into swans by their (of course) evil
stepmother. The princess could not speak during the duration, so she was unable to tell her father what transpired. Only by silently completing this impossible task could she free her loved ones and herself.
For six long years she toiled until she completed the onerous and painful work. There was blood, for crying out loud! There was a marriage. There was an evil (of course) mother-in-law who kept stealing the princess's new-born babies and making it look like the princess devoured them. Still, the princess could not speak to defend herself or the six brothers would be lost. Finally, at the end of six years she was sentenced to be burned to death for, ostensibly, eating her children.
Only at the last minute did she finish those shirts enough to throw them over her brothers as they flew overhead, returning them to their true shape. The last shirt wasn't entirely finished, so one brother had one wing instead of an arm. What the hell! It was the best she could do.
At the moment of deliverance, she recovered her voice. She was finally able to speak the truth. She got her brothers AND her babies back. That was the big payoff.
Call me crazy, but this reminds me of retirement. How many people at the end of their working lives, having sacrificed themselves for the betterment of their family at jobs they did not love, can relate to this fairy tale?
For six long years she toiled until she completed the onerous and painful work. There was blood, for crying out loud! There was a marriage. There was an evil (of course) mother-in-law who kept stealing the princess's new-born babies and making it look like the princess devoured them. Still, the princess could not speak to defend herself or the six brothers would be lost. Finally, at the end of six years she was sentenced to be burned to death for, ostensibly, eating her children.
Only at the last minute did she finish those shirts enough to throw them over her brothers as they flew overhead, returning them to their true shape. The last shirt wasn't entirely finished, so one brother had one wing instead of an arm. What the hell! It was the best she could do.
At the moment of deliverance, she recovered her voice. She was finally able to speak the truth. She got her brothers AND her babies back. That was the big payoff.
Call me crazy, but this reminds me of retirement. How many people at the end of their working lives, having sacrificed themselves for the betterment of their family at jobs they did not love, can relate to this fairy tale?
 |
| Illustration by H.J. Ford |
Most people I'm thinking. Especially new immigrant families. The parents give up so much to ensure their children have a better future.
ReplyDeleteIt gives me pause.
DeleteMessage duly noted.
ReplyDeleteI'm not 100% sure what my message is. I probably shouldn't admit that, but I struggled with this. It just reminds me of the honest and heroic work average people do, and I wish it was honored more. There is a great beauty to working hard, and the "duty" and love components motivating the work in this tale really speak to me. And, of course, retirement can be the big payoff.
DeleteWhen I consider this in the context of your recent post, I think having a union and a shop steward might have helped this unfortunate princess to find her voice much sooner. I'm so happy you spoke up. Another simple heroism in everyday life.
One of my favorite fairy tales. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome, my friend. And thank you for letting the fairies lose on your blog this week. I have been looking for them outside ever since.
DeleteOn Tuesdays, eightish, in order to leave the house free for our cleaning lady, we eat junk food at the supermarket café and watch the world awake through huge windows. If we hang around long enough we note a modern phenomenon: one or the other grandparent shepherding grandchildren hither or thither. While, by implication, the mother and father are at work trying to pay off the mortgage.
ReplyDeleteI'll give the grandparents credit - most look happy in their work. Perhaps they foresaw this years before and accepted it as part of retirement. You, for instance, moved a thousand miles to be near your grandchildren and good on yer. We of course intermittently looked after our own grandchildren but only through part of the school holidays, sharing them with other grandparents. We did this happily and learnt a lot about young children, the second time around. But never through term time.
I'm talking my sixties and seventies. These days I know I'm intellectually a burnt-out case. Then the spark of creativity burned. I wrote four novels, about fifty short stories, taught myself to write baddish verse, did the blog, wrote real letters - making use of the energy I'd developed through forty-four years of journalism. If things had been different no doubt we would have... Yeah, we would. Hmmm.
Your telling of the hideous fairy story was admirable. I kept on asking myself: do I know this or not? If I wasn't sure about the details I think I recognised the vindictiveness of the plot. There were other stories which described terrible privations, where I felt - young as I was - that even though things turned out OK the central character would have been scarred for life. I was lucky, aged 11 I knew what I wanted to do in real life and my Dad fixed the first small step. For 44 years, give or take, I enjoyed myself. Your final question doesn't apply but I shudder on behalf of those for whom it does. I guess you re-opened a wound I hardly knew I'd suffered.
You are hardly an intellectually burnt-out case! I am carefully reading your most recent book "Opening Bars" and I am amazed by the depth of your thinking, and your talent in sharing your thoughts. I know nothing about what you are writing about, not the medium, the songs, the technique. However, I am still able to share the experience and learn from it because of the way you write.
DeleteAs for the fairy tale, I am deeply moved by everyday, common heroes. I have met so many. The heroic quality is the best in all of us. I was a union organizer for 3 1/2 years in my youth. The experience opened my eyes to true heroics and changed my life for the better.
Thanks for that about OB. But it's the creativity that goes, the ability to dream up characters, events, propositions, language and conclusions that grab the reader's lapels. I'm 30,000 words into a 100,000-word novel (my fifth) and doubts hover. But then novels are self-inflicted and I can only blame myself.
DeleteHeroes? If I won £20m I'd allocate £500,000 to the elderly/old women who have worked the check-outs for twenty years at the nearby supermarket. For sticking to their task, opening the cartons of eggs to see whether any is broken, asking about the loyalty card, and doggedly, without sighing, keying in long numbers where the bar-codes won't scan. I don't like shopping and they lighten the load.
Hey, I was the member of a union (NUJ) for decades, barring National Service and the six years spent in the US. Comrade!
I worked hard at some jobs I hated and I worked hard at some jobs I liked. My family always came first but having work outside the home and another purpose was important to me. I do miss it.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. The first year of retirement I was in ecstasy - couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Then I started floundering, looking for meaning. Horrifying! As awful as the Trump presidency has been for America, newly awakened activism and the resultant political work has given many of us retired women something important to do. I enjoy the feeling of contributing again. I missed that. As much as I hated my last job, I love working hard.
DeleteI think work is always in front of us. Any work we've accomplished becomes history, the past. We don't know if the best is yet to come. We always need "something to do", sometimes important, sometimes mundane.
ReplyDeleteSomething!
DeleteI never read this fairy tale before, and I never had children. I loved the work I did at the university. This story is a new perspective for me, and I really do appreciate that. Gives me insight into the true hard work of families.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Robin.
DeleteThat is a CRAZY fairy tale! I swear, some of those fairy-tale authors were taking drugs when they came up with that stuff. But I suppose it is true that we all make sacrifices for our families, in one way or another, and that's the nature of family, after all. (Nettles? Shirts out of NETTLES?!)
ReplyDeleteYep. Hence the blood. I guess the evil stepmother thought it was an appropriately impossible and painful task. :)
DeleteI was addicted to these fairy tales as a child when I first started to read books, they could not be more gruesome and cruel. Murder, evil spells, dark secrets, children being eaten by animals, devious witches and fairies waiting in the dark, the lot.
ReplyDeleteYes, I read these on my own as a tween and young teen. I couldn't get enough. In this story, I left out that the evil mother-in-law smeared blood on the princess's mouth while she slept and THEN stole the babies away to make it look like the princess ate her babies. And of course, when the princess could speak again, the mother-in-law got burned at the stake.
DeleteIf you enjoy your job you never have to "work" a day in your life. I am on of the lucky ones who loved my job 99% of the time, although there were plenty of less enjoyable things I had to do to keep my family on track.
ReplyDeleteFairy tales scare the bejeebus out of me. Hard to believe they are written for children.
I'm happy you loved your job 99% of the time. Wow, that's a beautiful thing. As for fairy tales, I read this book (From the Beast to the Blonde, by Marina Warner)that makes a more positive and even feminist case for the early fairy tales, which were often cautionary tales told to children by grandmothers. I wrote about this is an earlier post: "It seems grandmothers in the Middle Ages used to tell it like it was: weaving and repeating tales that warned their grandchildren about the dangers of violence, greed, brutality, abuse, scam artists, and even incest. They taught children how to use their heads in a crisis and avoid becoming victims." That's an interesting take on why they were so scary, and what purpose that served. Different times.
DeleteI just revised and updated that older (and formerly overly long) post if you are interested: http://agingfemalebabyboomer.blogspot.com/2015/02/old-wives-and-vampire-killers.html
DeleteI do wonder what kind of world it was that parents told these kind of stories to children as cautionary tales.
DeleteAnyway, I came across this link that may be of interest to you
https://offspring.lifehacker.com/check-out-this-free-digital-collection-of-six-thousand-1825187059
A friend of mine has got the soggy end of the lollipop, publicising Opening Bars. I read him your April 7 comment and he said, "Ask Colette if she'd be willing to copy the first para, all bar the first sentence (ie, from "I am carefully reading..." to "... because of the way you write."), as a review in Amazon's listing of Opening Bars. Publicity is so much easier when there are genuine reviews."
ReplyDeleteI'd do it myself (with your permission) but the review would not carry the very necessary "Purchase authenticated" line.
Can I bribe you? A free copy of Out of Arizona - it has an American heroine earning a crust in south-west France. I love her very much.
Done!
DeleteWe were not a bit fairy tale kind of family (unless you count bible stories).
ReplyDeleteInteresting analogy. As I don't think I will "retire" I shant have to worry about, 'what to do'. Unless I do. :-)
I hope you do retire someday.
DeleteI've never heard of that Fairy Tale, WOW, perhaps I should be on whatever that Author was taking... it makes Alice In Wonderland's rabbit hole seem sane! *Winks* Lot's of 6's in that Tale and a rather Hellish Vibe! And I Wonder what inspired the Author to write such a fantastical Tale or what personal Issues of Life they were moving thru? I do think a Lifetime of working hard does not necessarily ensure a Fair outcome or just reward, which is rather tragic.
ReplyDeleteGood point!
ReplyDeleteI thought I had commented here the other day, but I see I didn't. I remember that fairy tale. I associate it with being on a vacation at the beach with extended family as a kid--that's where I was when I read it. I remember being very creeped out by the story, so much so that it made reading it memorable.
ReplyDeleteI love that creeped out feeling. Makes a big impact.
DeleteThat is a dark one Colette. And RETIREMENT....I refuse to give it any thought. It terrifies me.
ReplyDeleteHa! Save every penny you can. And have plans for meaningful volunteer work after the deed is done. It is a permanent vacation.
Delete