Cinderella

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. The little girl was very special to her mamma and her mamma was very special to her. The mother worked very, very hard. And when she wasn’t working, she spent every single minute with the little girl. They spent hours and hours alone. The mother had the heart of a poet and a dreamer. Life, however, had different plans for her. Even as her dreams broke, sometimes quite brutally, she never stopped dreaming. She never stopped laughing. She never stopped singing. She never lost her sense of wonder. And so it was, she invited the little girl to do the same. Together they would climb into a tiny world of their own and the sad things around them would suddenly disappear. There were adventures to have, board games to play, cakes to bake and many happy things to do. Often times, the magic would quite simply lie within the pages of a book – especially within the pages of a very special red, hard-bound book…

I really loved that red book. It wasn’t always red. My mum bought it for me from a tiny pop-up stall on the side walk. It was a very ordinary looking extraordinary book. In fact, you would have to have been extraordinary, like my mum, to spot it being sold from a sidewalk and recognise it’s worth. Anyway, the book became mine and mum had it hard-bound with a nice red cover to keep it safe. I fondly called this my ‘Fat Red Story Book’. It is a very vintage British publication filled with every classic Fairytale ever written and sprinkled with the most delightful of illustrations – the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Robert Southey, The Arabian Nights and much more. Needless to say, no other book from my childhood could ever contend with this book to be my favourite. My mum would read to me from the pages of the red book and instantly I was transported away to meet Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, the Three Bears, Rumpelstiltskin, the Twelve Dancing Princesses, the Real Princess and all my favourite characters. As a child, I remember being lost in the magic and wonder. I watched the princesses come alive and my mum watched her ‘princess’ come alive as the stories unfolded. Amidst the enchanted, the drama, the sparkle, the imaginary, the ridiculous, the unlikely and the downright impossible were precious lessons to be learned. It was always a happy time that ended with an important question from mum, “…And the moral of the story is?…”

Many years have passed. The morals, the lessons, the ethics and the principles from those childhood Fairytales have been firmly implanted in me. However, life and it’s whimsical ways, somewhere along the line, dulled the sparkly charm of a Fairytale. It’s somewhat hard to accept that, in reality, life is a ongoing concerted effort to reach the always elusive “Happily Ever After.”

Thank God that things go full circle.

They went full circle for me when I had my daughter, 6 years ago. Suddenly my love for dull colour schemes was traded in for various fluffy and fuzzy shades of pink. Then came the nursery rhymes of old, the glitter, the dress-ups and of course, the Princesses. Before I knew it, I was once again in the world of Fairytales and life offered me a second opportunity to wander through the pages of my “Fat Red Story Book”. I find that my own acquired cynicism suddenly melts away as I take my mother’s place and Shannon takes mine. With conviction, I read to Shannon. This is her time to see life as one big “Happily Ever After”. I have to admit, however, that under my enthusiasm, there’s always a slight gnawing inside me – the kind that, I suppose, my mother must have felt but never showed. I guess this comes from being very aware that once the story ends, Shannon will remain soaked in fantasy and I will return to the realness of real life. This tends to suffocate one’s imagination.

And then someone made a movie – the latest version of my old favourite, “Cinderella” – not an animation but a movie with living people.

My husband and I felt like awesome parents as we secretly booked tickets  and then whisked Shannon away to watch “Cinderella”. I was really excited to watch our baby girl’s reaction to seeing one of her favourites come alive on the silver screen. Little did I know, I was the one in for the real surprise and revelation. Right from the opening scene, I was enraptured. Here was the stuff I had lost somewhere along the way – the mystery, the magic and the wonder. Every scene and every detail breathed fresh life into my dormant imagination. I squealed with delight as someone finally showed us how a pumpkin turns into a gilded carriage, how a lizard transforms into a footman and how tiny mice transform into shining white horses. Apparently, the transformation, to and from, is not as seamless and instantaneous as I had previously imagined! I finally saw what a glass slipper must look like – it was just as breathtaking as I had expected. Cinderella was lovely. The Prince was handsome. The Palace was majestic. The step sisters were utter dimwits. The step-mother was truly a wretch. The plot was cunning. Kindness changes the ugly into something beautiful. Evil lost and good triumphed. They lived Happily Ever After. The movie was brilliantly and believably made. The child in me was beyond thrilled. The truly amazing part, however, was that the adult in me was equally enthralled…

I noted for the first time, that contrary to how I had perceived it as a child, the Step-mother didn’t blatantly turn Cinderella into a servant. Instead, what she did was to manipulate her and play on her soft, noble heart, slowly and tactfully, until finally, Cinderella had almost voluntarily signed up to be a servant. Much like what happens to us in the real world. Kindness is so often taken for weakness. I watched, with a refreshed spirit, as two young people fell in love with each other – and kept their clothes on. Love was portrayed as how it was designed to be – respectful, spiritual and simple. How much nicer the world would be if the movies stopped reducing and equating love to a physical act! It was also a silent message that Cinderella herself was not the typical airbrushed, photoshopped, flawless media version of perfection. Cinderella was exquisitely portrayed by an everyday, innocent and comely looking girl who’s most attractive assets were simply her courage and kindness – assets that each and every one of us can choose to possess. Choice finally calls the shots. Our choices are what finally make us – brave, timid, good, bad, beautiful or ugly.

For me, the clincher, of these two well spent hours, came in the form of one beautifully worded dialogue, “The greatest risk we will ever take is to allow ourselves to be seen for what we really are.” How true is that?! A profound statement and life’s most worthy challenge all summed up in one sentence. True success as a human being would be to fully conquer this challenge personally and to teach our children that their best selves are only themselves. Of course, this exercise is a well rounded success only when we can be who we really are and accept other people as they are.

To every adult reading this, if you have children, treat them to an evening at the movies. Let their baby minds drink in the wonder and sparkle of a classic Fairytale in full motion and colour. But most importantly, treat yourself to a trip to the movies. Watch “Cinderella”. Allow yourself to be a wide-eyed kid again. Allow the adult in you to realise that Fairytales never go out of season. Under all the enchantment is life as it is – a marriage of the fantasy and the real. Fairytales are slightly ridiculous make-believe worlds, much like the one we live in – full of real challenges, characters who persevere and hope that never gives in. I suppose the Fairytale life is the life that has learned to find and focus on the magic that is subtly camouflaged amongst the mundane, the ordinary, the routine and even the difficult. What of the ‘Happily Ever After’? I believe that Jesus has guaranteed me my eternal ‘Happily Ever After’.  In the meantime, elusive as it may seem, our earthly ‘Happily Ever After’ lies, as the movie reminds us, purely in our ability to see things around us not for what they are but for what they can be – hard to do but not impossible. On the odd day that we can’t seem to do this, it doesn’t hurt to flip through the pages of a colourfully animated book that, without fail, offers us a ready-made, sure-shot ‘Happily Ever After’.