Elona of the Great Green

Up in the Great Green Henry Alan, Elona and Queen Alesasha have just finished their lunch and while the rain still drips in steady streams, it has begun to tame itself from the crashing spring storm that leapt out of the blue blue sky. Elona sits in the fairy hollow and ponders the rain. “What do you think the sun said to the sky this time?” She questions Henry Alan. Henry Alan is almost disinterested as he watches two ants fight with their antennae, each vying for a morsel of dewberry cheese dropped from Henry Alan’s cracked acorn sandwich.”Ah the sky is over sensitive, it always cries in spring, something about the babies and flowers makes her weep, I guess” Elona looks up through the thick branches. “Do you think they’re tears of joy, then?” Henry Alan crinkles his nose. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe.” Elona’s expression bursts into a smile. “That’s it then. She’s happy. The sky is happy! She’s just shedding tears of joy. I’ll have to tell Elona the first chance I get…” With that Elona gasps and covers her mouth with both hands, realizing that she has just divulged the deep hidden secret, that while she is forbidden to speak to humans she still sees Magenta, almost daily in fact. Queen Alesasha turns her head sharply! “You’ll tell whom?”

Elona’s face drops to the ground as Henry Alan whispers. “Oh now you’ve done it, Elona!”

(photo credit: Feather’s  Space at Wunderground.com)

It is amazing when you really start to look at children’s fantasy how much of it centers around the leading character either being an orphan or adopted.

In the case of the Golden Compass, Lyra the leading character is not really an adoptee as no new parent has adopted her, but is an orphan. Wikipedia describes her as an orphan living in a parallel universe where a child’s soul is represented by an animal daemon who follows them.

An evil empire bent on controlling the world called the Magisterium, kidnaps kiddos. When one of Lyra’s friends is kidnapped she travels north to recover him.

So how does this have anything to do with adoption other than the fact the Lyra is an orphan? Well, Lyra is really not an orphan. While I thought the film was pretty violent for little kiddos, I do applaud the creativity and imagination and the overall theme of film which is about prolonging the “innocence” or imagination of childhood, which is much like what I am trying to achieve with Elona. What I found disturbing outside of the violence, is probably only disturbing to me because I am an adoptive parent.

You see (SPOILER ALERT DON’T READ BEYOND THIS POINT IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE MOVIE AND WANT TO BE SURPRISED…..seriously, don’t)

For the rest of you…..here’s the problem.

Mrs. Coulter is Lyra’s birth mother and is as wicked and evil a woman as any Disney (which this is not Disney) villian can be. She is the actual epitome of wicked in more evil, controlling, take over the worlding ways to count.

I think that this image perpetuates the stereo-type of the kind of woman that would relinquish their child. That in order to relinquish a child to adoption, the birth mother must somehow be cold and unfeeling.

As a writer with a child whom I will eventually need to discuss her birth mother and her birth mother’s history (which is pretty sordid as I adopted through foster care) I will still want to show her examples of kind people and loving moms who made hard choices. That is how I will try to frame the birth mother in Elona. While it will be in a fantasy realm I will try to paint as realistic (minus the darkness) yet empathetic a picture as I can. Meaning I will use the realms of fantasy to cloud some of the harsh facts.

Films like the Golden Compass who show birth mothers as controlling, evil villains, who want to squash a child’s imagination and innocence are not the kinds of characters that I want my daughter being introduced to early in life while she is trying to understand adoption. I think we would save this film for a time when she has a clear sense about the choices and life her birth mother had, before being exposed to this kind of dramatically negative narrative influence.

So…that being said. As a film the Golden Compass I am sure is just as entertaining and magical as the Lord of the Rings for the kids of that age range, but as a film that deals with adoption, I find the portrayal of yet another evil mother, this time being a birth mother, a little insensitive.

Magenta helps her Auntie clean the dishes after lunch and watches the rain pour down from a now heavily gray colored sky. “It’s amazing!” her Auntie says while using a clean checkered towel to dry a plate covered with dainty painted flowers. “How does the weather just turn like this?” She says with a perplexed look on her face as she cranes her neck closer to the window and peers up into the large oak tree. “Why it was just sunny not more than an hour ago..it’s almost like magic.” She looks at Magenta and smiles. “What do you think?” She inquires.

Magenta gives her a warm smile. “The sky must have gotten sad.” Magenta says. “Maybe the sun hurt the sky’s feelings suddenly.” Magenta’s Auntie gives her a gracious grin. “Well I sure hope they make up soon don’t you?” “I do, but the sun is never in a hurry to admit he was wrong. I assume that the sky will weep a bit longer.” Magenta’s Auntie lets out a tiny sigh of disappointment. “I assume so.”

At first glance one may not think that there are a lot of adoption stories in films or literature created for children today, at least that was my first assumption. But, since I am the mother of a a two year old, I have had the “privilege” to watch/listen and read many such stories. As I write a story for children about adoption,  believing in yourself, fairies and the earth around us, I would like to take a look at adoption in other story telling mediums geared towards children.

So to start, Disney’s Dinosaur

I love this movie, while I felt it was a tiny bit violent for a two year old, I also felt that the Dinosaur stuff was real and that avoiding animal behavior might not be a good thing, so my daughter and I talk about Dinosaurs and their sources of food. When we watch the film together, my kiddo screams with delight when she sees “the Big Guy”….meaning the multi-teethed and evil-mean Carnitaurus who spends most of his time growling and I applaud and say “right on kiddo” for not being afraid.

What I LOVE about the movie is that it is about empathy, understanding, hope and adopted families.

A lemur family finds a baby dinosaur egg and while there is a threat that the baby will grow to become a predator one day,  they raise it as their own. And in being raised by the lemurs, the Dinosaur becomes part monkey, by cultural association with his adopted family. However, as the lemur family joins a pack of dinosaurs, they too become part dinosaur as they work together to save the heard from the Valasa Raptors and Carnitaurus that pursue them throughout their journey. When they finally reach the fertile and safe nesting ground at the end of their journey, the Lemurs, once considered “parasites” by the dinosaurs are fully included in the dinosaur heard.

What I love as a transracially adoptive parent is the idea of blending cultures, that may or may not seem deeply divided. It is this empathy, care and love shared by the common thread of “Family” that creates a bond and a blending of culture, race and heritage as my child will continue to remain part of my family and I hers as she herself has children one day and again blends more into the tapestry of our heritage.

I highly recommend all parents, but especially adoptive parents seeing Disney’s Dinosaur, released in 2000 and available on DVD.

When it rains fairies often head for shelter deeper within the tree. In the tree’s trunk is where fairies make their homes. When the weather turns wet like it is on this very spring day fairies will often sit by the light of fireflies and dance together inside their fairy hollows.

Henry Alan and Elona arrive home in time to eat a meal of fresh flowers and honey. Queen Alesasha has kindly prepared a large helping for the two wayward fairies. She gazes sweetly at Elona, the tiny fairy who showed up on her doorstep years ago. You see a fairy is born the very moment a newborn baby laughs for the fist time. From that time forward, that fairy and the baby are joined. It is still a fairy rule not to let themselves be seen by non believers, as the disbelief of a child can end a fairy’s life, on rare occasions it is possible for a fairy and the human child who created them, to meet. Elona, on the other hand has taken this liberty much too far and Queen Alesasha fears she could endanger tribe one day.

Queen Alesasha’s gaze shifts to Henry Alan as a glow of pride crosses her face. “That fairy”, she thinks to herself, “will never get himself into trouble. He’s a very well behaved boy.” This fact gave her much relief as looks over to Elona, who even today is covered in leaf dust, which means she’s stepped too far outside of the tree during the light of mid day.

There is a mythology that states every time a new born baby laughs a fairy is born and another that says when a child says they don’t believe in fairies somewhere a fairy drops dead.

For the sake of this story I will be using the child’s laughter to be the birth of a fairy. Therefore Elona is Magenta’s fairy so that she is born when Magenta first laughed.

What are fairy families like?

Well fairies are actually all ONE family there are kings and Queens, but they are all of one family origin, created by the laughter of children. They live together in enclaves. Fairies have been known to show themselves to the child who created them, but it is a rare occasian that the child will actually see them.

As Magenta and Scarlet enter their Auntie’s house. Magenta’s Aunt has prepared a lovely lunch as she always does on Saturdays. There are fresh fruits from the garden that Auntie grows herself and pastries she has baked from scratch as well as salad and sandwiches all of which are usually eaten outside on the porch. But since it has begun to rain, Auntie has put a log on the fire and they eat indoors watching the water come down in soft spring drops. Magenta’s mother wears a warm smile as she and her sister have just been caught, mid conversation. “Adults” Magenta’s believes are the most boring creatures and is very happy she has missed most of what her Mother and Auntie are saying. While Magenta often looks forward to the day when she and Scarlet can sit and chat all day in the sun, she suspects they will dream up better things to discuss than the growing of tulips and Mr. Marks (one of Magenta’s Mother’s patrons) bad troupe and foul demeanor. Magenta’s uncle comes in from the “back”, a term she has grown to believe is some part of the house where only he is allowed as he often comes to lunch smelling like fresh cut wood and is covered in dust. And apparently the place is too cluttered and mismanaged for Magenta’s Mother and Auntie to “step foot in”. Possibly this is because he makes furniture as a hobby and is too passionate about his work to care about clearing the debris. Each piece he creates is a vibrant color and most of them are sold to a restaurant in the city called the Neon Cafe. Magenta has a growing pride in the fact that her uncle has single handedly furnished the entire restaurant which she and Scarlet have only been to once as the food is strange and expensive.

He sits beside Scarlet and produces a tiny blue chair for her collection of miniatures. Magenta smiles as she knows he has one in the other hand for her, in pink.

Well as I am writing this story, I sure hope we think they are real. But are they real? Really???? Well…hum. This I believe is what intrigues us so much, do things exist outside of our perception.

Well science has told us that Dinosaurs are real, yet today they are very much a fiction, scientists have also said the stars are real, but they emanate a light that has been extinguished thousands of year ago, micronisms are real and yet we can’t see them with the naked eye. So are fairies real????

Well I would assume most would say “no”. There is the famous case of Cottingley fairies, where Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith thought that fairies where real, so much so, that they photographed them in 1919.

In 1981 it was discovered that 4 of the 5 photographs where fake, but here is the 5th photograph and both women swore that it was genuine until their deaths. They maintained the belief that they not only saw fairies, but photographed them for this picture.

Taken at age 16, it is hard to believe that they had the technology to fake such a photo with an ancient plate camera.

Interesting….

What kind of fairy wings do you have???? Take this quiz.

http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/507618/what-kind-of-wings-would-you-have-

http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/result/507618/354106/

I have iredescent wings 

Magenta always has loved the way her aunt’s house smells of warm baked food. Even when nothing was baking, there seemed to be a lingering hint of cinnamon and butter in the air. Magenta’s aunt’s and her Uncle live in the country, about an hours drive from Magenta’s loft apartment in the city. Every weekend Magenta’s mother brings the girls out her her Aunt and Uncle’s house for a relaxing weekend in the country. While not far from the city, the country feels like an entirely different world, quaint and picturesque with the warm smells of home cooking and fresh wild flowers.

Magenta truly loves her loft in the city and the funky bedroom she shares with Scarlet. Her mother, being an artists has painted a beautiful wall mural for the girls, with towering purple flowers and a bright red butterflies. It is a magical room that feel homey and safe which towers above the bustling street below. Magenta’s mother often wears over sized shirts splattered with paint as she spends her day creating large works of art for various patrons. The whole loft, both upstairs and down smells like fresh powdery paint which nicely mixes with the ongoing sounds of the street below. Magenta, Scarlet and their mother live in a converted warehouse that was sectioned off into apartments. They live in the building with other artists who also work from home. Magenta has many friends in their building and especially likes to play with Gabriel whose father is a classical guitarist. Together they pretend they are in a rock band, Magenta sings, Gabriel plays guitar and piano while Scarlet wallops the drums. Life at home is wonderful and fun and Magenta wouldn’t trade it for the world. However, she is amazingly grateful for her respites to the quiet countryside, where she sleeps in her own room under a handmade quilt that always smells like fresh flowers, with the cool breeze blowing through an open widow which lets in the quiet air.

Magenta’s Aunt lives in the suburbs of a large Southern American city, the location is developing and families are quickly moving into the once quiet wooded paradise. Magenta’s mother and her sister, Magenta’s auntm live but thirty minutes from one another. Magenta, Scarlet and their Mother live in the city….in an urban home, so weekends are spent on Magenta’s aunt’s sprawling property.

The girl’s Mother is an artist and paints large murals for a living, she produces works for a famous art gallery in town and they live in a warehouse that has been converted into a live work space. While it is beautiful, it is in the city and near the hustle and bustle of busy lives.

Magenta and Scarlet’s Mother loves to take the girls out to the country on the weekends to experience time spent with family in nature and she herself enjoys the company of her sister and her sister’s husband.

The Great Green is a large oak tree that stands outside of Magenta’s aunt’s yard. It is over a hundred years old and has housed fairies within it since it was a young sapling. Among it’s fairy inhabitants it is considered one of the clan’s oldest and most magical trees. The Great Green is near a thickly forested wood a prime spot for new suburban development as it is uninhabited by humans and covers a vast acreage prime for building.

Take this quiz and find out what kind of fairy are you?

http://www.jomarpress.com/ashley/fun/quiz_fairy.html

I am an air fairy