My marriage has been to me the most nourishing bread. From my marriage I know much of what can happen between a man and a woman - what healing and wholeness, what forgiveness and what strengthening.

But all of the things of which I’ve read in old romances have happened to me in meetings and partings with men who had no claim on me nor I on them. When I read, as a girl, of people wasting away for love, I never believed it. Yet when I was twenty, three days after parting with the man who didn’t love me, I rose up from my couch and found all my ribs cowering, exposed, under my gaze. I’d lost twenty pounds. Those were dark days and it is partly due to them that I finally decided to marry the man who would heal me rather than waiting for a hypothetical man who would do like in the movies. I don’t regret my choice, the more so since the man who is healing me has also proven to be the man who leads me to God and His Church.

This past weekend I experienced something that I hardly know how to understand except in terms of gallantry such as I had thought obsolete. Not all that goes on between men and women can be named in terms of animal desire. Not all that is sexual has to do with sex.

But still, how did gallantry awake for me - how me? How did it come about that three modern men sat sighing around a modern girl, pressing their hearts with their hands, playing the guitar for her by turn, calling her endearing names, refraining from rough language and modern liberties of behavior, waiting on her, asking her to sing, and seizing her hands, crying, when she did? (And then finally, in a protective gesture, sending her home before any of the others got really drunk…) Was it really me, who was never counted skilled in music, never courted by anyone but my husband, never pursued or sought out in any of my native circles?

How did I pass five hours in the guise of a lady? I have been many other individuals - arrogant little girl, awkward and despised teenager, dependable big sister, eager religious debator, depressed college student, desperate and even cruel religious seeker, grateful wife, weary Mama, aspiring writer, and always so much, so very much less than I wanted to be. How did it come about that one enchanted night, the night of my bosom friend’s wedding, I found myself surrounded by a few eccentric and very real men who made me feel adorable in some sense that has far more to do with what I share of feminine nature than with my dubious personal accomplishments?

I think what I experienced was something to do with the nature of masculine and feminine - the part that only appears when the two meet. Protective gallantry, respectful delight on the one side; on the other confiding welcome and modest pleasure.

Begone, bourgeois hopes. I will not seek to be commended to God or man by mere paltry achievement. I do not know what will commend me. But I don’t think that what happened last weekend was meant to leave me in my erstwhile course of individual ambition.

And I hope God blesses these men whom I will never seek to see again, for loving what what was best in me - was it really there? - and for sharing what they shared with me. Did I mention that they were all talented, gentle men themselves? I didn’t want to seem to speak too much of them. They are God’s, not mine. And my husband is waiting for me, a familiar, friendly, patient light in his eyes - the light of full, unique love in spite of full, sometimes sordid knowledge.

It’s a wonder, indeed - what goes on between men and women.

Ah, Wisconsin! Where the landscapes look like patchwork quilts shaken out by gods of earth and sky; and where June is Dairy Month.

After the traffic hell that is Chicago, I crossed the border into my home state and pulled over at the first exit for a rest stop. I stretched; my limbs creaked and eased and my knuckles sank into the good Wisconsin turf lipped by the white flowers and fine green disks of our humble Wisconsin clover. White flowers of clover are good refreshment. If you ever find yourself wandering on a dirt pathway between woods and fields, far from home at lunchtime, that is a useful thing to know. Just make sure that no cows or deer have passed that way too recently. Then pinch the flower firmly at the base of its head, and pull the white spiky petals out one by one. The nectar is at the end of the spike, where it disconnects from the head.

A few dozen swarms of misquitos danced over to welcome me and I greeted then with a friendly if somewhat vigorous wave. Inside the rest stop building I studied a huge state map behind hard plastic, and felt quite efficient for finding the relevant spots in about three seconds. It’s a good settled feeling, to know where you are. Wisconsin has one of the oddest shapes of any of the states. It’s like something that was trying to be born as a flying squirrel or bat. Or a One-Horned Muskopod. But it didn’t quite make it. No doubt due to ‘those liberals in Madison;’ they are generally held responsible for everything that gets aborted here.

What’s odd is sitting in my parents living room typing away at my Mom’s laptop, and seeing green grass out of the corner of my eye through the front window. It seems like I should be looking at snow. However, last winter’s bumper snow crop has turned into this spring’s bumper misquito crop by way of all the flooding they’re getting. My parents’ house is on a hill so the flooding hasn’t threatened them at all. But many of the roads my dad normally drives to work are closed.

They have guniea hens now, my seven-year-old brother informed me as we tried fall asleep, he on his mattress on the floor and me on the sofa next to him. Kid has his own room but he’d rather sleep upstairs with the puppy. My parents are cool with that. You will not meet a lot of people like my parents even if you do come to Wisconsin. It’s been about six years since the last time they didn’t have someone in need living here. Right now it’s an elderly Irish lady, high on spunk and low on health.

My brother explained many things to me as we tried to settle in for the night - what a porkupine looks like when you shine your flashlight in its face suddenly, and why dogs bark in the middle of the night (it’s because they can hear the porkupines moving in the long grass, along with the rabbits and hedgehogs and turkeys.) The older dog, a collie, spends all night out of doors now that it’s hot and now that my parents have guinea hens. The collie will round up the guinea hens if they escape. The puppy will rip their wings off. My brother made a terrific face to explain the horror of the last event. Animal death, and birth, is part of learning about life here in the country.

Kid finally got to sleep despite the one lucky misquito that found its way inside, but I’m getting too old to sleep on the sofa. So I wandered downstairs and sacked out on top of my older brother’s bed. He’s away camping with his cool guy friends. Yeah, here cool people go camping when they want to live it up. I didn’t sleep much. Around 4:30 I heard my Dad leaving for work so I got up to see him off and we sneaked in a five-minute version of one of our old theological conversations. So much hasn’t changed. I laughed so hard driving in when my little sister called asking me to pick her up from her best friend’s house before I even got home.

About the only thing that’s different is me.

But coming back here I realize that there’s part of my that will never change. It’s the part that says “this is my own, my native land.” Native, of course, refers to the ground on which one was born. I never left Wisconsin to live, until three months ago. Despite all the talk in politics and so on about patriotism, I sometimes wonder how anyone can experience patriotic sentiments if they don’t feel their heart attached to a very specific bit of this Earth.

I loved a little paragraph in Lord of the Rings, which I can’t find now…two of the characters are discussing their love for the elves and all high things. And one points out that you have to love lowly things first; you need good earth to sink your roots into before you can stretch up and aspire to higher loves. I guess for me, Wisconsin is The Shire.

No grass appears either fine enough or thick enough, and every other landscape is either to rough or too dull compared to Wisconsin’s gentle hills. Right about now the birds and the swamp frogs are finishing their throaty contest and Wisconsin’s natural green and gold is making its way up the hill on which we are set. My parents have a dirt driveway about a quarter of a mile long. If I run up and down it four times that’s two miles.

So long.

What music would you listen to while reading The Lord of the Rings? I choose Tchaikovsky’s Cappricio Italian (sample at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a3GmV_DaLs )

This music expresses war, and the feeling of goodness and greatness - even merriness - lost.

Of course Wagner’s Ring cycle is also effective.

- Scottie

I like to cross disciplines by way of increasing my total artistic intelligence.

So although I consider myself a writer, lately I’ve been sketching a lot as well. Whenever I am sitting idly and waiting for something, somewhere, I pull out my sketch book and pencil - or in this case, the only pen I had in my purse.

We’d been having lunch at the pond and while Scottie took Johnny around to the beach or the playground, I sat on a bench, swatting at fire ants and sketching. It increases personal integrity. I mean that. There’s something about the attempt that makes you a little more whole, a little more steady, a little more true to truth. Above is the landscape composite I did on the last day.

Later on I turned many of my brief sketches into a series of preliminary possible illustrations (such as the one below) for a picture book I’m working on. I’m hoping my brother-in-law, a developing artist, will help me to turn them into regular color illustrations.

A philanthropist was walking on the sidewalk and met a sorely crippled man going along in a weelchair.

“How did you become crippled?” he asked.

“I loved a girl, and wanted to win her heart. Therefore I bought a weelchair like the one her crippled father uses, and I always went about in it, so that I would seem more familiar to her.”

“And did you win the girl?”

“No,” the fool answered, ”for I have now lost the use of my legs by pretending to be crippled, and my sweetheart was not willing to be bound to a lame man as her mother was.”

I am a fool
And I know why:
I was born under
A bronze, bronze sky
A mewling bird
Fell from its nest,
And died within
My mothers’ breast.

A warring girl
With bronze, bronze hair
Called to the wind
But none was there;
Spoke to the grave
With no reply
Then something gave
In her bronze, bronze eye.

O come with me
Who on the earth
Creep haltingly
Twixt death and birth
O come with me
All you who long
For more to be
Than fair and strong.

And you who crave
For other worlds
Beyond this world
And every world
We shall mourn sore
What death has sown
And stand up more
Than men have known.

Tune base: O Waly Waly (The Water Is Wide)

American elections: like a sixteen-year-old girl, we are ever questing for our new hero. He must be someone who will treat us like an equal while protecting us from all the things we can’t handle about adult life. He must do this with the understanding that we get to dump him in a few years. Sooner, if he’s really, really abusive.

We search the profiles of our prospective political lovers; are thrilled and despondant by turns. They take us on dates to rallies that rival the excitement of a rock concert. They take us to expensive dinners - which we have to pay for, naturally - and promise us the world. We believe them again and again. We fall in youthful love, quarrel, and break up with our favorite candidate. We hear rumors about them which we believe one moment and disbelieve the next. Eventually we decide to go to the dance with whomever asks most nicely. And then the seething process comes to an abrupt halt - because the constitution says it shall - and we wake up the next morning with an election-year hangover, wondering what “we” did the night before.

Furtive rumors seep through the veil between us and the rich, and we start to suspect that what made our candidate so hot actually had something to do with sucking up to unelected powers. He made all those promises, but does he really love me? We wonder.

Some, it turns out, do really love us. We remember them with painful passion, treasure their keepsakes and letters. But we always say goodbye and watch them go away, to belong to someone else. They were good for us, but it was never going to last.

What’s really odd is the contradiction in our humors concerning this process. On the one hand, we feel it’s all about the moment - the process - the change - getting there. On the other hand we whine and complain constantly about not being “proud of my country” - tacitly discomfited by the fact that we define ourselves as a nation newly with every new President or Congress. We claim that we are grown up and can handle our own life, but we hate the way it is turning out. Not our fault, we cry. We never realize that what we really want is a King.

Yes, a King. I know, most Americans labor under the odd conviction that a king is a tyrant is a king. But deep down, a King is what all human beings want. We want the husband who is always going to be there, not the boyfriend we will dump in a few months for someone just as inadequate. We want someone to play the role of Head who is there because he is destined to be there by the relation of his birth and ours, not because he was hot this semester and ”we” decided he was our new steady.

Yes, a King would take our - well, taxes - just like any other leader. What he would give in return, however, sets him apart. Almost any wife understands the difference. It’s the difference between a home and a shack - however palatial the shack may be. It’s the opportunity to bear true faith and allegiance to a Person, not just a text. It’s the different kind of self-knowledge that comes from attaching yourself to a husband whose character makes its powerful impression upon your own. It’s learning to get along with someone who is presumably there for the long haul - not just until next mating season. It’s knowing you belong to each other equally - but in different ways.

It’s getting to treat someone else like they are better than you. That’s a privilege that we as Americans miss more sorely than we yet realize. Maybe when we’re a little older we’ll wish we could trade in our ticket to the Everlasting Prom for the privelege of putting on our best clothes, bowing down our bare heads to a head that is crowned, and saying “Till Death Do Us Part.”

Too bad a king can’t be invented out of thin air, which leaves American expertise at a loss. I guess we’ll be going to the Prom forever.

Passing into the Willow Ware
Is something I don’t often dare;
But when I arrive in Willowareland
I always wield a ready hand.

O sacred shallows, brittle sight;
The shores of Willowareland by night!

Decide to vanquish a Willoware Dragon,
In quest of the fabled Willoware Flagon;
Then out upon you come the cries
Of the Willoware Boy to him who tries.
“Rally from foliage; Rally to blue;
Cheer him on by the Light of Lue!
Give him one, two three four five;
Give him one last laugh alive!”

Then you advance with prickling spear;
With sickling gut do you go near
Over the bone-white sands you tread,
Over blue bones of trees that are dead
(Things you can’t see from the cupboard door
But once in that land, emerge galore!)
And there, behind the blue willow tree,
One little tooth sticks out, you see.
Your mama thinks it is a leaf;
Your mama, sadly, lacks belief.
It is a dragon, well you know,
for now appears the dust-blue foe!

His head sinks down with a dreadful sway,
All glimmery-glare in the Willoware way;
He rears along with smokey-blue breath
And you think of Jane, but not of death,
Lying on fallen blue and white leaves
And spearing his passing flanks, like eaves.

Still, the outcome is quite a surprise,
For no one in Willowareland ever dies
(That’s why the Willoware Boy only cries
Not to the winner, but him who tries.)
So with hoary white gasps you battle hard
With slim white arms raised upon the blue sward;
But you’ll sit down when the ladies have come
Out of the willowware they are from;

Four Ladies come in a milk-white wagon,
To sit with you boys and the Willoware Dragon
Drinking blue tea from the Willoware Flagon.

This is the stuff of my childhood - I read this kind of thing because my Mother collected old books. I can rattle it off in minutes but I’m aware that today’s child would be expected to find it boring and most likely would actually do so unless introduced to it early. I make it for delight purely.

The relationship between ten-year-old reptile enthusiast, Aleth, and her scheming guardian, Hannadrasp, becomes dangerous when Hannadrasp tricks Aleth into stirring up a Dragon. Unaware of Hannadrasp’s secret purpose, Aleth tries to atone for the destruction her mistake has loosed upon the town of Mirrogarden.

…

On the eve of her tenth birthday, Aleth is lizard-hunting with her friend Werner when a ball of red flame appears for a few moments over the woods of Mirrogarden Town.

Aleth’s guardian Hannadrasp (representative of the King’s Justice to Mirrogarden) convinces the honorable men of the town (including Werner’s father, Dr. Vegter) that it is not their place to interfere in the business of the heavens. Since the fire doesn’t seem to have spread, the town goes to bed instead of investigating, which is what Aleth wants to do.

Hannadrasp tells Aleth about the obsolete custom of the “eleventh year quest,” claiming that it will help her to gain the distinction she needs to be presented at court when she is older. On the morning of her birthday Aleth discusses this idea with Werner and with Old Krish, the elder of the lizard colony in her garden. Werner, who has begun acting as if he is too old to be Aleth’s best friend anymore, declines to be involved. After he leaves, Old Krish tells Aleth of a rumor that the King of Reptiles has come to Mirrogarden. She decides to quest for this King, as much to prove something to Werner as to satisfy her own interest in reptiles. She foolishly flees down the Reptile Trail, supposed to be off-limits to humans.

After she leaves, Dr. Vegter happens to see Hannadrasp talking secretly to Old Krish. This is strange because Hannadrasp has always claimed to be unable to speak to animals. Eventually he leaves the Town and and walks an hour to talk about his suspicions with Mr. Ping, a reclusive friend and fellow Honorable Man of Mirrogarden.

Meanwhile, Aleth stumbles upon a secret “fire meadow” hidden in the woods. This meadow is filled with rare red flowers, berries, trees, and grasses, almost appearing to be ablaze. There she meets the King of Reptiles: a scarlet Dragon, the most beautiful and largest reptile Aleth has ever met. As a reptile enthusiast she’s thrilled, but as a ten-year-old girl she’s frightened, especially when the Dragon wants to know why the town hasn’t brought him an honorary meal yet and threatens to eat her.

The conversation doesn’t go well, and Aleth flees back to town. But the Dragon gets there before her, burning all the crops in order to roast alive whatever animals are in the fields.

Hannadrasp takes charge of the situation, insisting that only Justice can help them. The Dragon’s heart, she reveals, is a cluster of living gems, contained in a heartsack hanging from the Dragon’s chest. In it is stored all the virtue of everything that the Dragon has ever stolen. If the person who angered the Dragon can slice off that heartsack and bring it back, they can plant the cluster of gems in the ground and all will be restored. The Mayor reveals that Aleth is the one who stirred up the Dragon, and Hannadrasp heartlessly insists that her charge carry out the impossible task.

Aleth walks bravely enough back into the Reptile Trail, but once out of sight of the town, collapses in despair. Werner, remorseful for the part he played in the disaster, first looks for his father, whom he cannot find, and finally borrows his father’s medical bag, hoping that they can use some of the instruments to retrieve the Dragon’s heart. The two lay plans till sunset, and then make their way back to the meadow where they find the Dragon singing his Setting Song to the Sun. Aleth realizes that however wicked the Dragon may be, she does not want the beautiful King of Reptiles to die.

Werner and Aleth pretend to be Reptile Physicians, and Werner seizes an opportunity to slice off the heartsack with one of Dr. Vegter’s knives. In turn, Aleth saves the Dragon’s life by putting a small gem from the heartsack into the Dragon’s mouth as he lays bleeding to death. He shrinks terribly and loses his wings, but is ultimately transformed into a Salamandral - an immortal Fire Lizard. He surrenders as Aleth’s captive, on his honor to be released only when she determines that all damage has been corrected.

They wash and sleep in the meadow that night, and in the morning bear the Dragon’s heart and the Salamandral back to the town. The honorable men are ready to discuss planting the heart, but Hannadrasp, who seems surprised to see Aleth still alive and even more surprised to hear about the Salamandral, insists that Justice demands she, Hannadrasp, be the one to dispose of the heartsack. Then, instead of planting the heart, she takes it into Aleth’s house, locking Aleth and everyone else out.

Aleth, the Pings, and the Vegters retire to the Vegter house to discuss possible plans of action. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of a bedraggled messenger from a Town to the south on his way to petition the King for assistance. His town and many others, he reveals, were also damaged by the Dragon on his way to seek the fire meadow. Hearing that the Dragon is no more, he rejoices.

But his arrival brings up an important point to the Honorable Men: other towns are also in need of the restorative powers of the Dragon’s heart. The men decide that they cannot allow Hannadrasp either to plant the entire heart in their own town, nor to keep it for herself.

The next morning the men assemble before Aleth’s door to speak to Hannadrasp. Before they can knock, however, the door opens and thousands of reptiles pour out, hissing at everyone and biting anyone who tries to shoo them away. Hannadrasp proceeds to the Green in the middle of the reptile mob and rings the bell to assemble the town.

As representative of the King’s Justice, she insists that every citizen must eat one gem of the heartsack. Whatever he has done wrong, she says, the virtue of the Dragon’s heart will punish it.

The people weep and clamor for their crops back, but Hannadrasp is adamant. Only Justice can save the town, she says. The food will take care of itself later.

Dr. Vegter does not think that Hannadrasp believes what she is saying, and very wisely suggests that Hannadrasp eat the first gem. She agrees to eat the second, if Aleth will eat the first. After all, she says, Aleth is the one who truly needs to be punished for bringing all this evil upon them. The people, enraged and frightened, agree with her. Aleth, weeping, tells them all she is sorry for her foolish behavior in stirring up the Dragon. Dr. Vegter insists that she not eat, but reptiles surround her and carry her to Hannadrasp. Dr. Vegter is bitten by several poisonous snakes in the scuffle.

When Aleth swallows a gem, she falls to the ground as if dead. Werner is distraught but he is kept from any foolish actions by Mr. Ping, who is waiting for an opportunity to do something helpful. Hannadrasp is exultant and claims that Justice has decreed the death of the one who brought evil into their midst. She unwisely goes on to declare that all Aleth’s land and property are hers now, and Dr. Vegter, dying, tells Ping that he believes Hannadrasp set everything up in order to seize Aleth’s posessions. Werner stays with his father while a few other men arm themselves.

Suddenly Aleth stands up. She has grown taller than Hannadrasp and more beautiful a lady than anyone ever saw. Treading without harm over the reptile mob, she touches Dr. Vegter and heals him. Everything she touches, if it has been broken, bruised, wounded, diseased, burned, ravaged or destroyed, is restored. The armed men capture Hannadrasp as, trampling on the reptiles, the townspeople carry Aleth all over Mirrogarden to heal the land, water, houses, and creatures. At every touch some virtue goes out of her. At the end of the day Aleth is merely a ten-year-old girl again but Mirrogarden is well.

At midnight, Hannadrasp confers secretly with Old Krish, who had shrewdly directed the reptile mob from the safet of Aleth’s garden, and so was not captured, killed, or driven off in the meantime. Hannadrasp promises him that if he brings her part of the Dragon’s heart, she will make him the next Reptile King once she eats it and becomes invincible. The old lizard slips into the Mayor’s house and steals as much of the Dragon’s heart as he can carry.

The next morning the men come to load Hannadrasp into a cart, wrists and ankles loosely bound, to carry her to the King for judgment. Perversely waiting till the last moment, Hannadrasp swallows the gem from the Dragon’s heart, crying out that she will be the greatest lady in the land. However, what actually happens is that she begins to shrink. She shrinks away until she is a tiny wrinkled person the size of a man’s finger - the size of the Salamandral, who becomes her jailer.

The Vegters and Aleth, leaving trustworthy men in charge of their crops, travel all over the land planting bits of the Dragon’s heart wherever devestation has occured. Over half the heart remains as winter approaches, and they travel to the King’s court where Aleth becomes the youngest outlander ever to be presented at court. She gives the Dragon’s heart to the King, who promises to make it available whenever his lands are in need. Aleth sets the Salamandral free on the Winter’s Soltice. He takes Hannadrasp with him as a maidservant, because she is no longer able to deal successfully with her own kind. Aleth and the Vegters travel back to Mirrogarden in the spring, where all is prosperous for many years afterward, and Dr. Vegter takes Hannadrasp’s place in Mirrogarden until Aleth is old enough, when she becomes a more renowned and wise lady than her guardian could ever have made her.

I’m nearly finished writing this. Finding myself getting stuck at the crisis, which is where I usually lose all the threads of the story and give up on it, I decided to write this synopsis to make sure I finish this time. Does the book sound interesting to anyone? I think it will come in at about 20,000 words. That length and the age of the main characters suggest a middle-grade novel. But I’m afraid it’s not “high-concept” enough.

It was partly inspired by the following poem.

The Little Salamander
by Walter De La Mare

When I go free
I think ‘twill be
A night of stars and snow,
And the wild fires of frost shall light
My footsteps as I go;
Nobody - nobody will be there
With groping touch or sight
To see me in my bush of hair
Go dancing through the night.

Below is the ninth and final poem in the Holly Brightweed cycle.

I have a steady, heady lust for light.
I breathe (what time of day
the light goes gray)
sharp sheen of coming night;
Drink the whitened brilliance
in which late-night shoppers swim,
and chase those glows that kindle dim,
through Juney velvet fields, their bobbing dance.

Wild for moon, I will
wait in a wintry midnight, till
strange silver spills down white
bare trees. O languid light!

And laughing light! That in the summer plays
caprice upon the surface of the lakes -
an early gray soon sparkles red;
glows moreover into gold
that gilds a wavelet’s gliding bed;
gloats on, overbold,
the shimmering love of dragonflies and drakes;

then through our bed-side window breaks;
fills the ivory cup my husband’s brown throat makes,
anoints the sleeping wealth I hold:
this bronze-curled, christly head.

I know that I will go and gaze in after days
upon That Light from which, a torched flower,
our sun outwent.

Then, at last, shall I bow down. And rise again
to stand, myself enblazed, and look, how long!
and lust content -