I have become the doddering aunt who falls asleep in her mug of cider by the fire only to wake up and tell the same stories over and over again. That's who I'd be in another place and time, anyway; in this place and time I have only my love and the cat to see me drooling on the couch, and I have the whole internet to regale with material you've seen or heard before. I apologize for the dullness of my absentminded redundancies, but thank you for your kind attention as you smile and refill my cup.
Along those lines, today I want to share with you a story that I'm pretty sure I have told on the internet somewhere else before, just can't remember where or when, maybe even more than once. And even if you haven't read it there, perhaps you've heard me tell this story somewhere else in person. Keeping the tales and telling them over and over is the job of crones, and though I am not old by modern measure, at the same time childless, unmarried, no longer possessed of quite all my faculties, and walking when I walk at all with a stick and a hobble, I am indeed the very stuff of crones. So I shall take the liberty attendant upon my status and bore you just a little longer.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived with his mother. One day his mother called him to her and said, "My son, I have a quest for you. You must go out into the world and find a red house with a single chimney and no windows. The inside will be all white, and in the very center will be a star."
The boy loved his mother very much, and so he agreed and went forth into the world. He was gone a very long time. He searched everywhere, and he found many red houses, and many had chimneys, and most had windows but not all. Some were even all white inside. But none held a star.
Sad and weary, he returned home, in his mind a failure. But he was by nature brave and honest, rapped on the door of his mother's cottage, looked her in the face, and told her he had failed.
"That's all right, my dear," she said, gathering her son in a close embrace. "You were not to know that what you sought was here the whole time."
She went to the pantry and pulled out an apple, with a stem.
"See?" she said. "Here is a red house with a chimney and no windows."
Then she took a knife and cut the apple, not top-to-bottom the way we normally slice apples, but straight across the middle.
"And now you can see that inside it is all white, and in the very center is a beautiful, five-pointed star."
"And that," she told her son, "is what we call 'serendipity': finding something especially pleasant where we never would have expected."
And that is how I learned the word myself many, many years ago when a pretty young teacher told this same story to one of the elementary school classes in which I was enrolled.
Happy Love Thursday, everyone. And of course, Happy Thanksgiving if you are in the United States, or even if you're not. I don't think I need to spell out for anyone how serendipity relates to either love or gratitude; I just wish you plenty of it all.
(And just so you know, I might forget and do it again.)
Awww. I hadn't heard that story. And what a pretty photo of the apple-star - I've also never cut an apple open that way, I guess.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your true love. Hope you enjoyed your spaghetti dinners!
Posted by: Leslee | November 27, 2008 at 09:06 PM
I haven't heard this one before, and it's a great one. Thank you.
Posted by: BipolarLawyerCook | November 28, 2008 at 01:10 PM
Leslee, that dinner continues to be delicious, just like a proper Thanksgiving dinner, and neither of us has raw bloody hands.
And to both you and BLC, whose comment sneaked in while I was typing this, I'm so glad I could share this story. You know I heard it so long ago that for all I know it is copyrighted material out of some picture book which was read to us during a story hour. But the way I remember it, we sat around on the carpet while a pretty blond girl told us this story without any props, seemingly unscripted.
I had never seen an apple cut this way before when I heard it, either, and I remember being confused. I honestly can't remember anymore if we were told to go home and try it or if she demonstrated or showed us a picture. But the story did teach me more than the word "serendipity." It did teach me to try seeing and acting from different places than I was used to, and it has stayed with me my whole life.
I particularly like to cut apples this way now that I know a little more about plant biology than I did when I was that small. When you do this -- and it works with pears, too -- you get another view of how the fruit used to be a flower and what each part of that flower turned into in its transformation. I love that.
Posted by: Sara | November 28, 2008 at 01:41 PM