Navigating the Inner Landscape
Photos/Melissa Russell.
By Melissa Russell
A Covid Fairytale
Twelve mattresses high
a claustrophobic coffin of glass
waiting for a vaccine
Briars 6 feet deep
Your garden runs wild
with radish and thorn
Let down your hair
your groceries are here
Learn to spin masks
out of gold
Flee from the ball
The King wears his mask
under his nose
Don’t get caught
in a crowd Little Girl
or The Big Bad Covid
might get you
Restless nights of worry
waiting for The Vaccine
in shining armor
Our yard is overgrown with bushes. The front door is hidden from view and branches seem to claw at those who dare to approach. For a time, I felt like Sleeping Beauty in a castle encased in briars, except I welcomed the wildness and seclusion. Stay away, Prince, unless you come bearing a vaccine!
It wasn’t always this way, the bushes used to get trimmed within an inch of their lives. I’d get in a dark mood now and then, and snip snip away to regain some sense of control in my life. But now, no amount of bush mutilation will bring peace. The shrubs took over the yard, encasing the house as we waited out the pandemic.
I find myself dancing around the knowledge that I have so little control in life. To face it directly is overwhelming, it must be looked at from the corner of my eye. Countless fridge magnets and inspirational quotes tell us to let go of what we can’t control and focus on what we can. Yet underneath that nugget of wisdom is still the message that you can have control. If you can maintain order in your mind, home, and body, then life will go your way.
My whole life I have been searching for control, though I could not have named that’s what it was until recently. As a child, fairytale princesses did not resonate with me, they never seemed to hold much sway. I wanted to be a fairy godmother because they had power. I was alway playing fantasy and magic, wanting to escape the real world.
This quest for control slowly ramped up over the years as I explored Yoga, Tai-Chi, mindfulness meditation, faith, acupuncture, self-help books, and more. But it fully bloomed in April once the novelty of working from home wore off. Under perceived threat, I returned to what was most familiar. I tumbled into yet another spiral of seeking. What is safe? Can I grocery shop? Can I bring my daughter if she has a mask? What are the numbers? What should I stock up on? I bought all the kinds of masks and disinfected every package that came into the house.
However, my extroverted daughter bears it all with a fairy tale princess-like sunny disposition, though she yearns to be out in the world. Her way of coping is to make art. She spreads out her paper and pencils unapologetically in the middle of the floor and creates a world of smiling heart balloons, families holding hands, and cats stacked up to the sky.
Nothing brings my daughter greater joy than when I join in her artistic play. At first I resisted, craving to fill my time with productive chores or to numb myself with Netflix. The act of creating asks us to open ourselves to the now, to be with and bear what is.
My daughter’s wise cajoling finally got the best of me, and I soon found myself soothed by doodling with colorful pens, squishing clay, and watching watercolors flow aimlessly across the valuable paper I’d been hoarding too long. Even though I am an art teacher by profession, as an artist I still struggle to make time for my own work. It can be hard to move away from the clear boundaries of a job to the wide-open space in my mind.
For the past eight months we have made chalk drawings on the patio, made-up elaborate songs and stories, and even had a unicorn cookie making party with homemade decorations and rainbow hair clip-ins. Through creative play, a small bud of peace took root in my heart. I still checked the statistics daily as the skin on my hands continued to shrivel from so many alcohol wipes. Yet I found myself more able to take in and move through the anxiety.
As this new balance continued to grow in me, I stopped trying to transform into the untouchable fairy godmother of my childhood dreams. I relaxed into the certainty of mystery, and loosened control. Creating paintings, sculptures, and mini movies made with my daughter’s plastic toys was magic enough.
Something transformed in October. Instead of working in a dark corner at the back of the living room, I moved my art space to an alcove overlooking the purple blooming Russian Sage and Yellow Bells nodding in the breeze. At my request, a small path was cut through the bushes to my front door.
For the first time, I truly noticed the raised flower beds full of orange and pink roses, the scarlet Bottlebrush, and an odd little yard gnome among the wild growth. My daughter danced in and out of the bushes on her way to the mailbox. A yellow flowered tree protectively curved its branches over the paving stone patio.
The foreboding hedge of thorns had given way to an enchanted garden. It would not be controlled, but it would be created. A fairy godmother’s transformation only lasts to midnight, real magic is a slow burn, one small act of creation at a time.
Melissa Russell is a mixed media artist and a storyteller at heart. An art educator since 2005, she currently teaches Visual Arts at Del Sol High School. She holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from University of Wisconsin-Stout, and an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Most recently her work was included in the Nevada Humanities exhibition, Margaret, Are You Grieving. Her work has also been featured in Skulls, and Untold Stories:The Artist as Storyteller. In 2017 her solo show, Strange Little Things, exhibited at the West Las Vegas Library.
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