In A Tiny House

In a tiny house, by a tiny stream, lived a lovely lass, had a lovely dream...

So goes the first line of a song my Mum used to sing to me when I was a little girl and I sing to my Eleanor now as a lullaby. I have never before this moment googled it, but I have just learned it was a hit in England in 1954, when my Mum would have been 6 years old. A perfect example of something that feels like it belonged to only me, only my family, when really it came from the land of my parent's birth... I just don't realize it.

My Mum and Dad came to Canada in 1970, leaving both their families in England. Later my Dad's sister and her husband followed as well as his parents, but all of my Mum's family is still in England.
My Dad's sister is my Auntie Gill. Auntie Gill and Uncle Paul are my godparents and live about a 40 minute drive away from us now. Their only son, and my only Canadian cousin, lives in South Korea now, but we have the honour of being close enough to them to soak up their love, and provide them with someone to make some noise and eat their food when they are lonely. Their house feels like a home to me, a piece of familiar connection, a tie to my British roots and a source of love and welcome. Tea flows there almost constantly, and we read Hello! magazines and have entirely unironic conversations about whether or not Camilla will ever be Queen.

We spent a glorious day with them today. It was an incredibly beautiful fall day, and had a wonderful time making lots of memories. There were both pony rides and gelato involved. Two years ago, a month or two after we had been evicted, we spent an equally glorious fall day with them, but I remember being in so much pain from our eviction and the fallout afterward, and deep in the mystery of what on earth we would do while we were homeless (we had all our stuff in storage waiting for God to do something, and God did, just not the something we thought God would do) and Gill said something along the lines of, "It hurts now, but one day you will realize it has gone, and that you have moved on, and it doesn't hurt so much any more." That was true today, and a blessing to reflect on.

While we were together today, I told my Uncle Paul about a conversation Sophia had recently had with her friend. Her friend was upset becasue Sophia had tried to change the direction of a game while they were playing, by introducing a whole new story line to the game about fairies. Her friend had protested and told Sophia that Christians could not believe in fairies because God didn't make fairies and they were not real. This grieved Sophia to the point of weeping, a long, sobbing weep and conversation with Wade and I that lasted for what felt like an hour.

It came out that she absolutely believes in fairies, and that she also absolutely believes in Jesus and being a follower of Jesus is very important to her and she could not reconcile the two. Now, her friends parents and we have talked. We have applied all the lessons about how we can be friends with people who do not believe the same things as we do, and how incredible Christian writers have conceived the greatest works of fantasy and magic, and Sophia and her friend are still dear friends because Sophia has a lovely elastic, generous forgiving heart.

The other thing you should know is that when Sophia was small I was VERY concerned about her knowing the truth, and that when she was 3 I told her that Santa Claus was a game we play and that the real meaning of Christmas was all about Jesus. And I did the same thing at Easter with the Easter Bunny. And you know what? She did not ignore me, or not listen, I just think she believes in magic too much to possibly take it in. She said, "Yes Mum, but do you know where Santa lives?" and so on. She taught me that it was very, very, very important to believe in fantasy and make-believe. and she has no memory of  those early conversations and has invested in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and any other fairy, for that matter. She knows and senses truth but she holds just as holy any time she can sense grown-ups investing in a magical world and she RUNS with it and we have learned not to take it from her, but go with it, because we learn from her every time.

When I was telling my Uncle Paul all about the fairy conversation, little did I know what he had on his mind. He was almost sick, and needed to go for a walk and a smoke, and I reassured him she still believed in fairies but I had no idea the level of concern.  When we got to his house, he kept hinting and hinting that he had discovered something special while he had been digging in the yard. Sophia and Eleanor and I went out to explore, and behind an incredible gnarly stump in the yard, surrounded by tiny iridescent stars, was a fairy house. A tiny red light glimmered and shone as the girls looked at it. There was a door, with the handle carved, with (what must have been) fairy runes on it. There was a little wooden table and chairs, all carved from stumps. There was a basket with the tiniest tomatoes in it, a holder with three wands in it, a message on a leaf wrapped up in a hole. There was a wooden fairy ring and a tiny, silver, blue bell shaped lantern. Sophia could not contain herself, physically or vocally. Eleanor ran in circles. Eleanor saw the red light again (it looked a lot like the red light that shines from the end of Uncle Paul's laser level, but she didn't know that) Sophia squealed with delight, "I can not believe I found evidence of fairies!" It was so real, and palpable, I thought that there was every single possibility that there really are fairies in the world and that I was ridiculous to think I could know there were not. And as the girls ran around the yard I could not contain my tears of wonder and joy. All that time. All that effort.

And Uncle Paul had no idea that this special magic faith of Soph's had been so threatened. He just loved that the girls like Auntie Gill's fairy statues, and that have spent time in his garden waiting for fairies and wanted to help them along in their sense of wonder and magic. He told me today that when he was a boy, his Mum read him Peter Pan, and that it is still his favourite, and that he still wants to fly. I so believe that the Father above, the giver of good gifts, the Mother heart, gave my crusty atheist Uncle a nudge to deliver the purest joy I have seen. I also believe that God gave me a similar nudge, to provide the back story today, to choose, of all the stories I could have told him about the girls, that particular one, so that Paul could know the depth of his gift & how much it mattered.

We were so happy we took no pictures. It was too special. We were all giddy with joy. Auntie Gill has promised to send one later, but she doesn't do the digital send. The girls named all the fairy statues, convinced now that Bagitte, and Joy, and Angela would come to life when it was dark, when we weren't looking. Before we left we had to sneak peeks out the darkened windows and turn on the porch lights to see if the statues moved. On the way home in the car, with the younger two asleep, I had no idea Sophia was still awake. I said to Wade, "I can't believe that fairy house." And a little voice piped up, "I was just thinking the same thing. At Easter time, instead of an easter egg hunt, I want to have a fairy hunt."

In a tiny house, by a tiny stream, lived a lovely lass, who had a lovely dream.