Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2014 - 9

him a handful of mustard seed borrowed from a home in which no one
has died. Certain she can find it, she
hurries off to knock on the same
doors, only to discover that every
household has, like hers, been visited
by the death of a loved one. Slowly,
she realizes that death is part of life,
that no family is spared the pain of
loss. Even when I was a child, lots of
new houses were going up; hospitals
were becoming the place where most
people died. You could have borrowed
mustard seed from a house where no
one had died, though not from a family that hadn't experienced loss.
I know we talked about these stories; they became part of the family
lexicon. More important, though, I
spent lots of time thinking about

them on my own. I think they
helped me find out who I was, and
what kind of person I wanted to be,
out there in the big world whose
vague outlines I was only beginning
to discern.
Are all children grave souls, as I
was? I suspect they are, and if that's
the case, I hope today's children are
being introduced to stories that help
them puzzle out the world and the
way to act in it, the way those stories helped me. Better than any list
of "thou shalt not's" (or "thou
shalts"), they started me on my way.
They also invited me in. I thought
about what color my cloud was - it
ran the gamut from rainbow colored to black - and came to understand the futility of concealing bad
intent. When my first cat was hit by
a car, I knew there was no mustard
seed medicine that would restore
her to me. I saw the wisdom of the
sun's strategy - warming the man
until he took off his cloak instead of
battering him as the wind did, which
only made him pull his cloak closer.
I'm not sure it kept me from trying to
grab a toy I wanted from my brother,
rather than talking him into playing
with something else. But it worked its

...I hope today's children are being introduced to
stories that help them puzzle out the world and the
way to act in it, the way those stories helped me.
Better than any list of "thou shalt not's" (or "thou
shalts"), they started me on my way.
way into my psyche and became part
of the foundation for the personal
"thou shalt" and "thou shalt not"
lists that have stood me in good stead
for a lifetime.
If "From Long Ago and Many
Lands" laid my foundation, the natural
world has added superstructure to my
belief. Watching a monarch caterpillar
stop eating and walk away from the
plant it's spent its entire life on to hang
itself up and await transformation, first
into chrysalis, then into butterfly, I
understand the value of metamorphosis. You can leave what you have outgrown the use of; other worlds await.
Ants whose nests I disturb as I weedeat
risk their lives to collect their helpless
offspring, then rebuild. Peavines
extend tendrils in search of support,
wrap around whatever they come in
contact with; the vines, having gained
purchase, climb. Last year, I noticed a
tiger swallowtail butterfly on a butterfly bush. It was very fresh; it might
have emerged from chrysalis that
morning. Something had gone wrong,
either in its development or its emergence, because, while three of its four
wings were perfect, one hindwing was
crumpled, useless for flight. Its disability might make it less able to escape a
predator, but it wasn't preventing it
from enjoying life's sweetness. Probing
the tiny blooms for nectar, it was
resplendent in the morning sun.
One June morning, I carried some
garden refuse down to a capacious
new composting area to discover it in
use. A fawn had bedded down
against the lower retaining wall to

shelter from the heat. Its legs were
folded awkwardly beneath it: no way
it could rise quickly and escape. Its
eyes were fastened on me, probably
had been from the moment its ears
picked up the sound of my approach.
A few minutes earlier, I'd been entertaining fantasies about what I'd like
to do to any deer I could corner.
Nightly visitors were nipping aboutto-bloom daylily buds and denuding
new raspberry canes of leaves. If this
little guy wasn't party to the destruction, he soon would be.
And yet, at the sight of him, I
found my heart melting just the way
the mighty General Procop's did, in a
story from Germany in "From Long
Ago and Many Lands." Procop's
army had laid siege to the village of
Naumburg. Finally, he issued an ultimatum: If Naumburg didn't surrender
by the end of the week, his army
would enter the town and kill every
man, woman and child. The villagers
were starving; in a last-ditch effort,
they sent their children out, singing
and dancing, to invite the general to
play. Surely, they thought, at sight of
the children, he would relent. A
teacher in the village had come up
with this scheme, and it worked.
Procop could have killed the children
then and there, then advanced on the
village and burned it down. Instead
he was beguiled. He demanded a
bowl of cherries, invited the starving
children to share it with him, then
sent them home. The next morning
when the villagers awoke, Procop and
his army were gone. 
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014 | 9

Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2014

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