In 1968, Claudia and I were married in Portland, Oregon. We were most fortunate to have someone very close to both of us perform the ceremony. My only brother, Robert, who is nine years older than I, was a young Jesuit priest and somewhat of a rebel.
The ceremony was beautiful. Being a priest, Robert had vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I am sure he was faithful to those vows, as opposed to the situation now in 2002. He had no money to buy us a wedding present, so instead, he wrote eight fables as gifts. Unfortunately, I loaned the original packet (I thought I had many copies, but I was wrong) to a student about 15 years ago, and they were inadvertently destroyed. However, I was able to recover three of the stories, two of which are below.
Alone, all alone, he sighed. Why him - why did he have to be a rose anyway? Why couldn't he be -laughter broke through his sad reflectings - yes, like them? That's right! Why couldn't he be a daffodil?
Lifting his drooping red head, he gazed longingly across his stony field, over the wire fence, into the luscious green meadow. How beautiful they are, all yellow and bright, and how dismal my deep red outfit when compared to theirs. And their stems - so straight and smooth, so full, such a pleasant green! An almost furtive glance down at his own stem, twisted and pocked and simply loaded with those ugly, hurting old thorns brought tears to his eyes. Quickly he shook his head, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. Oh well, they'd probably just think it was dew.
Me - them: that's what hurts most. They stand together, happy and laughing and free, enjoying each other. I spend my life hiding by this rock, unhappy and by myself. If I only weren't so ugly, I'd be with them. I could be fun, the life of the party, bright and... if I just weren't a miserable old rose.
"Pardon me, sir. Pardon me." Jerking his head so fast he almost fell over backwards, he found himself looking into the face of a lovely young lady.
"Who are you?" he gasped.
"I'm from the great king. You, out of all his subjects, have been chosen "king for a day!" Remember that contest, those stamps? Well, you've won!"
He gulped. hardly daring to speak, he whispered, "What do I get? (Nothing much," he thought to himself, "with my luck.")
Her eyes glinting, the lady whispered back into his ear, "I can give you two wonderful gifts - one now, one at midnight. Now, you can be wherever you wish. Then, at midnight, you can be whoever you wish, forever."
Could he believe his ears - wherever, whoever? In his imagination, he saw the waving, happy, laughing daffodils, and himself in the middle of them, wearing a sparkly yellow coat. Hardly thinking, he blurted out, "I want to be there with them!"
"Hi, rose. Who are you? Where did you come from? Never mind. Come and dance and sing, laugh, and jump and play." And so he did. Never had he had such fun, felt so good, so "one of the gang." And at midnight, it's his forever! No more a rose he.
Then it happened! "Help! Run! It's the beast! We'll be trampled to death!" Starting up from his play, the rose saw a huge figure bearing down upon them. Suddenly, almost reflexively, he jumped in front of his friends and swung his thorny stem. It wasn't going to hurt his friends! Smack - right on the nose! With a wild yelp, the attacker veered to the right, and, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.
His red anger subsiding, his breath returning, he turned around to face a crowd of silent daffodils, transfixed with fear and horror. At their feet lay one of their number, stem broken, head crushed into the dirt, dead.
Tears rose from his loving red heart, strength from his deep red pain. Silently, he buried the so-young daffodil; quietly, he moved among his frozen friends. Wherever he moved, he brought his comfort, his understanding, his tears.
Night fell - quiet, finally. The daffodils huddled around him for safety and sleep. He would protect, be brave, be strong. After all, he's a rose!
At midnight, the lovely lady returned. She smiled when she saw all the daffodils nestled up so close to him, sleeping under his watchful eye. "Well, Mr. Rose, I'm back. Your wish is my command. Who do you want to be?" She stopped, smiled, waited.
Who did he want to be? His mind flitted back over the day - the laughter and play, his battle with the animal, his fight with fear and death. Then he looked at his new-found friends, so glad that he's a rose.
His gaze wandered to himself - his thorny, sturdy stem that had saved the day, his red coat so filled with the pain of love, his eyes ready to flame with anger or cry with another's pain. Slowly he lifted his head, took a deep breath.
"Young lady, I just want to be me."
With a kind, understanding smile, she nodded. "Sir, you finally are."
Once there was a little man, one foot high. He lived in a warm, well-lit, tiny room - his home. He loved his life - fluorescent lights, bright yellow walls, no windows to clean or furniture to dust or unknown corners to discover. How wonderfully certain, how bright and clean!
Every day - at dawn, at noon, at sunset - he pursued his life's work unfailingly, as he had for years. Moving always to the right, three trips a day, he explored his world. Explored? Well, revisited. Walking ever so slowly, he counted up his life encounters: this wall, all yellow except for two pencil marks from another age; this one, with some missing plaster and two large scuff marks (grinning, he recalled how once he had somehow slipped); this third, his pride and joy - so smooth, unblemished, unmarked by time; this last, so like the others but so much more, because it was the last, signaling approaching accomplishment and rest.
One day, on completing his rounds, he rested - but not really. He was troubled, unaccountably. His home had somehow been becoming, for weeks now, too stuffy, too warm, too bright, too known. Feelings of ennui enveloped him. He was so unchallenged. He felt his life draining away, leaving a tired, so very tired body and mind, shrinking to the size of his unused heart. And so he sat and sighed.
Disturbingly, yes, very disturbingly, a feeling and an image kept constantly, even vociferously, intruding. The feeling? - fear, an uncomfortable, screaming sort of thing; the image? - a small door nestled in the corner between walls two and three. Haunting! Oh, he had known it before. Once, years before, he had looked at that door, but since then his eyes were either tightly closed or seeking the ceiling as he passed by that disturbing knob. For so long he had forgotten it, had mechanically avoided it. But today his growing uneasiness had overwhelmed him, had broken through his pattern. He saw the door. And he was afraid.
Why afraid? - because he somehow knew that door could open, could lead somewhere, could offer newness, and discovery, and uncertainty. Why afraid? - because volcanically he was hearing, "My tiny room is too tiny. I can't breathe!" And he could leave.
Days passed. Days of growing restlessness passed. His rounds became faster, less satisfying. His room kept closing in, the air heavy and sticky and warm. In his imagination, he became a big cat - his rounds, prowls - his uneasiness filled with tension, sinister, foreboding. Then finally - oh, God - explosion! The hungry cat, uncoiling, releasing hurting tension, sprang to the door, wrenched it open, and screamed. For there was dark.
Recoiling, shaking, crouching, eyes frantically closing-opening, closing-opening. But the door stayed open, and he didn't run. Finally he just stayed and looked.
The tremors quieted with time. He straightened up. Slowly he approached the dark. As he stood at that light-dark threshold, miraculously the dark became less dark, the less dark less frightening. He stood there a long, long time. Then he began a new walk - six feet tall!
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