Once upon a time
When your mother was with child
She developed an unusual appetite.
She told your father
That what she wanted
More than anything in the world
Was greens, greens, and nothing but greens
Parsley, peppers, cabbages and celeries
Asparagus and watercress and fiddleferns and lettuce
He said “All right” but it wasn’t quite…”
–from Into the Woods
I’ve always loved the dark history of fairy tales. Rapunzel and her hair, Cinderella and her stepsisters – the Disney-fied versions of these don’t remind you that the wicked queen often ends up dancing in iron-hot shoes while her soul languishes in hell. AS a kid, I found a collection of pre-Disney versions of these tales, in a red leather bound book, in my grandparents’ house. Probably it belonged to my mother or her sisters, but maybe my grandfather had bought it for me. I never knew, I didn’t ask.
A decade later that book would be my inspiration, along with Anne Sextons “Transformations” in claiming, in a literary thesis, that Snow White was really a vampire story.
I still want to write it as a novel.
The red traditional fairy tale book was bought by my father for you, my daughter. While reading that book aloud to you, he commented that the naming of the Seven Dwarfs was a “Disney Thing!”
You would sit on his lap, frshly bathed and in your “jimmies” big brown eyes rapt with attention, and sparkling with adventure.
He read many of the ame stores to us when we were kids. We had a green linen bound book called Grimm’s Fairy Tales.