In a fairytale world, I would be the witch. Not to be nasty: in fact, I am quite happy. Grey and drizzly outside and I am tucked up by my fire, my cat at my side, her head all warm and comfy on my hip. My walls covered in books, and I’ve been baking, the scent of it cozy and bread like in the air. Yet in these classic tales, my life takes on a sorcerous slant. I am in my forties, single, childless. I am not the pretty princess, the resourceful peasant girl, the sea-child intent on her own adventure. I am the witch. My baking bowl transforms itself into a cauldron on my counter.
These are the stories we tell children, their first inkling of how the world works, childless women on the sidelines, in distant cottages, in the deep dark woods. This is one story: a woman grown old is so reviled she lives away from the village in a house made of flimsy stuff, bread, cakes, stiffened sugar to see through in the windowpanes. Two children come, also unwanted but young with it; they eat her house. In a kind of faux motherhood, she takes them in, gives them yet more food, but this is unsustainable. She is no mother. No man makes his home at her side. She is revealed in all her grotesqueness; in a cottage made of food she will eat the little ones as well, consuming every part of a happy homelife. Of course she is stupid, too, tricked into believing that a bone from a commonly eaten bird is a child’s finger, further proving her unsuitability for a woman’s role. Real women tend the hearth fires, so this woman is punished with one; she is burnt to a crisp in her own oven.
This is the story of Hansel and Gretel, those two crumb-dropping cuties. But what is the story of the witch? I wonder this, as I cuddle my cat, the rain falling against the window beside us. I admit it; mine is not the life I wanted. No, I wanted the fairy tale. You know the one. The nameless prince, cute and charming. The castle (a single family dwelling!) rising tall and turreted in my dreams. And children, too, the best and most brilliant, cutest and most charming of all. I wanted that life, not the deep woods one, not the life of the village exile.
But the witch’s life is the one I have. I am outcast in my own now-global village. Those aren’t really castles here in this city but still the apartment buildings rise up tall, the tips of them not turreted but glassed and gorgeous. It’s not true I know, but some days I think that all I see through that glass, silhouetted against shadow blinds, are families, families, families. Even today I look up and see a child at a window, his mother reaching over him for the latch to swing the window open, a large shape in the background that must be the father.
What I am finding though is that real life is not a fairytale. I know that, of course, but I still find myself surprised at this life, at the joy of it. No husband and I am happy alone, my life with a freedom that adorns, sparkling around me the way spun sugar would sparkle if you made it into windows. Bread baking in my oven; I don’t line my walls with it but eat it, warm on a winter’s morning. No children and my cat would never be unwanted, her small body so cute I could eat it up, just not in a bad way.
Who knew that the bookish child I was, the one who gobbled up stories and legends and fairy tales like they were bread or cakes or even a candy or two; who knew that girl would end up with this life? This one, herself now living alone except for her familiar-cat. Her books like grimoires on her shelves. My life wasn’t the one I wanted; I admit it. But it is one I love. I snuggle into it, the way you do into warm things, when they aren’t fairytale ovens.
Let me go back to those stories, the stories I read as a child, some of the first tales that showed me what the world was like, what I should be like in it. In the deep woods, I will find a cozy cottage, all made of warmth and goodness and yummy things to eat. The door will be open, a gumdrop for its handle. In I will go: a small cat cuddles cute and comfy on a hearthrug. The walls will be bright with books, as colourful as cakes, as candy. Outside the world is grey and drizzly, but inside, no. Inside the fire shines warm and bright, the light of it sometimes sparkling, the windows dancing with their spun-sugar panes, and all of it weird and witchlike in this new story for children. This new story, shining a different way that is as bright, really, as anything else.
Colleen Addison
Photo by Ella de Kross on Unsplash