A story of enchantment and love

I remember 20 years ago when I started writing my first online journal and people began reading it and emailing me. I was so thrilled because it had been years since my newspaper column writing days. I encountered so many fascinating an intelligent people who wanted to have discussions by email. Instant messenger was in its infancy, and so email was the communication vehicle of choice in that brave new world of the Internet in its earliest days of fast growth and adoption around the world.

One of my correspondents was a remarkable woman who lived in Texas. I saved a lot of our emails, just as people used to save letters, myself including. I have some that go back 50 years.

Well, this most interesting lady had a garden and lived on rural property with a little stream. And she wrote about her fairy friends in the garden with more than a little bemusement and not a trace of hesitancy about the reality of their existence. Being an open-minded person about events, places and creatures that one might tactfully ascribe to the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, I never forgot this person and her allusions to “wee people” and their fairy realms, hidden to most of us because we are not receptive enough and don’t know where to look. But that has changed for me, and now I have a keen interest in the unseen worlds.

Even though our email exchanges only lasted a year or so, they left an indelible impression on me. So with this in mind, as I started to read the linked story below from The New York Times, I began to think once again like a child, suspend my disbelief and transport myself on a Christmas Eve into a little girl’s fairy garden and entry into the magical world of a very wise neighbor who chanced upon it one day. Over the ensuing nine months she found that the pandemic’s quarantine-induced fog of despair she was encumbered by, as so many of us are as well, was lifted as she was  transported to that child’s world, one that is full of wonder and imagination.

Here is the story and the illustrated full account on Twitter. Feeling my own loneliness and quiet sadness and depression this holiday season, reading this brought a smile of happiness and gratitude, and made my Christmas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/style/fairy-garden-covid.html?referringSource=articleShare

The full story with photos on Twitter. Be sure to click “show this thread” near the bottom so yiu can see comments as well.

https://mobile.twitter.com/saysthefox/status/1337598289080770561