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Who Says Unicorns
Aren’t Real?
Dedicated to the Children
By Dr. Susan Rangitsch
Winter lies across the land so gracefully this year. Each week has
brought snows that blanket the hillsides, grasses, and bushes. Pine
tree branches bear down lightly until a whisper of wind blows the snow
away. Tiny ice crystals swirl, sparkle, and then dissolve.
I turn my attention from
this beauty, seen through huge windows, to the warmth of the fire. My
daughter, Katherine who is 4, snuggles close and asks, “where are the
bears on this winter day?”
I answer, “maybe the old
ponderosa pine up the hill is where the mamma bear and her cub from last
year are sleeping.”
The north side of this tree
was torched by lightening years ago and a cave was burned into the lower
part of her huge trunk. Though scared deeply, she is still a towering
and healthy presence. Katherine loves to go there. It is one of her
favorite places on the land; a secret cave, hidden and protected.
.
“For reals, Mommy,” she
asks, “and the chipmunks, are they in their homes with the bears below
them?
It was a sweet and natural
association. On warm days, Katherine and I would play games with the
squirrels and chipmunks. It always seemed their path led to this
Grandmother tree. Often, we would hear a cacophony of sounds as we
watched their scurried activity up the trunk and through the maze of
gnarled branches.
“Yes”, I answer softly,
“and the critters feed their small fires with dried twigs and petals of
pine cones you watched them gather last fall.”
Again, she asks, “For reals
Mommy, and where do the unicorns go?” Of course she would ask about the
unicorns. In her child’s mind, they are as real as Santa Claus and the
Tooth Fairy, but her fascination of this single horned animal is above
and beyond all others.
I say to her, “Into a
world where the sun and moon beams fall on flowers that bloom through
the night and day.”
Today, the stories she
choose reflect the winter season perfectly; The Snow Angel, with
pictures of the whiskered fish, and The Mitten, a wonderful tale
of how all the forest animals try to keep warm in a single mitten.
These stories sat on her shelf through spring and summer and into fall.
Now, they are alive for her again.
She looks through her books
and tells me the stories while I gaze out the window towards the hill
below us. I hear the fire crackle, and her voice, a melody of delight.
Against the white backdrop of the open slope, I begin to count the
deer. There are 27 of them, pawing in the snow and munching on the
grasses beneath. They are so at ease in their quiet foraging.
Then I wonder, “are the
unicorns there, too?” When I was a child I always saw monkeys in trees
and even now I catch glimpses of kangaroos in the periphery of my vision
- and sometimes unicorns. I look again, beyond what is obvious.
Interrupting Katherine, I
ask her to come to the window. “Count with me; one, two, three....
There are 27 deer and do you see the three unicorn off to the left of
them?”
“For reals, Mommy?”
We stick our noses against
the glass panes and our breath obscures the magic below. “Where,
Mommy? I want to see them!” I wipe away the foggy film and all the
deer are gone; the unicorn, too.
“But I wanted to see them.
Do you think they will come back?”
“Especially for you, my
love. Especially for you!”
Katherine leaves the room
and returns with an armful of her favorite stuffed animals. Seated
close to the fire, she begins to arrange them in groupings of giraffes,
horses, zebras, and her most precious, the unicorns. She has brought
three. They are beautifully stitched and hand made, and she treasures
them above all the others. In her wide-eyed wonder she looks at me, and
asks, “For reals, Mommy, did you really see three unicorn?”
She climbs into my lap and
I smell her long dark hair. I close my eyes to savor this moment, and a
remembering comes over me; a remembrance kindled by her most innocent
question, and the softness of this moment. I notice the snow is falling
and the breath of God is still.
It is many weeks later and
after brilliant days of clear crisp coldness, the snow is falling
again. Is it the last snow of winter of the first snow of spring?
Katherine has been home from preschool for maybe an hour, and then she
comes into my room with that certain look.
“Tess says unicorns aren’t
real!” A single tear escapes her wide eyed bewilderment and hangs on an
eyelash. The tear doesn’t fall. It hangs delicately and I know it holds
Katherine’s thin thread to enchantment, mystery and magic. “Please
don’t fall,” I pray.
Come sit with me”, I say to
her. She brings her stuffed bear and we cuddle into a deep chair and
look out onto the slope where 27 deer and three unicorn had grazed. It
is a view that will be changing soon; the dormancy of life giving way to
longer, warmer days.
“Did you know the sweet
smell of cinnamon is present where ever a unicorn steps?” She looks at
me poised between intrigue and disbelief. “And did you know that
someone once found a unicorn horn, but it was so special no one person
could own it?”
“For reals, Mommy?” She
looks at me. The tear is gone, reabsorbed into her well of wonder.
“Oh, yes,” I say to her as
I pick up an old English book on unicorns lying on the table beside us.
I turn some pages and read, “ In silver bound, beneath the ground,
awaits the spiral horn.”
“Mommy, what does that
mean?”
I tell her that ever and
again the horn must be hidden so the rightful owner can be drawn to its
side.
“So the unicorn who lost
her horn, will she find it?”
“Yes, and listen to what
else this says. “Into the darkness will I fade, into a night that man
has made. And through that gloom shall gleam the sun when I am lost and
again am one.”
“Mommy, what does that
mean?”
I say to her, “the unicorns
live in another world and when the shadows of darkness are lifted, they
will return. When we can be kind to each other, everyone, everywhere,
the unicorns will want to live with us again.”
“For reals, Mommy? In this
day?”
Hesitantly I say to her,
“maybe not today, but perhaps soon, very soon!”
She ponders this for a
moment and then asks, “If they live in another world, did you see them
for reals?”
“Sometimes, love, I can see
into their world. And if you learn to look between the spaces of what
seems real, you might see them, too.”
“”Show me, Mommy. I want
to see the unicorns!”
Katherine is fascinated by
the pictures in the book we are holding, and I marvel at their likeness
to the those painted on her porcelain plate collection. I look out the
window with these images in mind, and I see the unicorn as a possibility
that sparks imagination and intrigue. The unicorn is a symbol of joy and
has been since antiquity. She symbolizes what is deeper than happiness
and rises out of well being and essence, like the sound of Katherine’s
laughter that spreads an energy of brightness and delight.
The snow is no longer
falling, the clouds are parting and shafts of sunlight cast long shadows
through the trees. “Let’s go play!” I say to Katherine.
Down the stairs we go,
stopping briefly to put on boots, mittens, scarves and coats. It is a
game of “who’s first” as we race down the same hill where 27 deer and 3
unicorn had grazed weeks ago. The tracks are covered and only slight
depressions in the snow remain from that magical day. Then, ahead of
me, Katherine stops, spreads her arms wide, and falls back into the
white softness. She is the snow angel.
She becomes very quiet.
“Mommy, I smell something sweet. Can you smell it, too?
I inhale deeply, and in the
hush of the moment I whisper, “Cinnamon, Katherine, It’s cinnamon.”
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