as a Fairy Tale
with Easter egg annotations
by and about Jennifer McStotts
–
There was once a man and a woman who met one night in a bar. Both were raised in the same land in the West where they met and they fell in love and they married and they went off to travel the world together. For years they lived a happy life, but all the while they confessed to each other that they both regretted never having the opportunity to study, to learn, that others had. They thought,
In another life, we might have been historians or archaeologists, we might have made famous discoveries, but without learning, without knowledge, we feel incomplete.
They promised each other that someday they would make the time for study and that their children — if they had any — would go to the best schools to learn whatever they chose, whatever made them feel whole. And one day, to their surprise, the woman became pregnant with a baby girl, and that winter, the man became a father and the woman, a mother. Remembering their promise, they sent their little girl to school at a very young age. As she grew up, they told her everyday how, when she was grown, she would go out into the world, wherever she chose, and study whatever made her feel whole.
As years passed, the father watched his daughter grow. He was a sometimes engineer, a sometimes inventor, and he saw in her the same love for creation, for design and detail and function, and so when she was old enough, he gave her his toolkit for drafting — a table and paper and pencils — hoping this area of study would make her feel whole.
The mother also watched her daughter grow as the years passed. She was a sometimes secretary, a sometimes writer, and she saw in her daughter the same love for people, for their needs and problems and what made them tick, and she hoped her daughter would be made to feel whole by studying people, by writing them, and so she gave her the tools of language — of books and paper and pen.
Each night as she neared adulthood, the daughter would sit down to dinner with her parents, and they both saw they had raised her with a quick mind and a love for discussion, for argument, and so they sought to each give her the gifts of conversation and debate.
In this way, the daughter was very spoiled.
Eventually the day came for the girl to leave on her journey into the world, but when her parents asked what she wanted to study, she couldn’t decide! There were too many possibilities to choose from to know what would fill the emptiness inside her that matched the emptiness inside her parents. But she had to go, and so she packed her favorite drafting tools and her favorite books, said goodbye to her father and mother, and set out across the desert around their home to travel to the nearest land to the south.
At first, she tried to study everything: anthropology and archaeology, linguistics, English, sign language, economics, engineering, architecture, design. Over time, she realized she liked psychology and literature and the history of architecture most, the mind and the mind at work on paper and in the world. But not one of these areas alone made her feel whole. After four long years, she said,
“Perhaps the problem is I have not yet tried to apply what I learned.”
And so she traveled across the desert again, this time to the east and into green hills, to a land much farther away where she could learn how to protect architectural heritage from those who sought to destroy it. The void inside her began to fill, but in her excitement, she thought,
“This is not enough! I have to do more than save each building one by one. I need to learn the rules of who builds where and how and why so I can change those rules, so I can do more!”
And so she began to study the laws of this and other lands of how our precious places can be protected. And she wrote about these laws, and wrote some laws as well. This too, began to fill the emptiness, but in her excitement, she thought,
“This is not enough! I can do more to help the world and the people using these spaces by teaching others what I’ve learned!”
And so after more long years of study, she traveled to yet another land, farther east, where other teachers chose her to help them teach the next generation of protectors. There she taught, and she wrote, and she helped, and she explained and advocated and served, and she waited for her emptiness inside to finish filling. But years passed and slowly she realized the space was filling at the same time it was draining away with fatigue, and in her exhaustion, she thought,
“This is too much. Just because one can do it all, doesn’t mean one should.”
She realized she had learned the most important lesson she could. Slowly, her heart began to fill again. She made arrangements to travel back from the eastern land to where she had begun, and there she took back up her mother’s tools and began again to learn for the love of learning a craft. And she wrote happily ever after — I hope.