I love telling my boys stories. No, I am not referring to Goldilocks and her monopolistic gang who try to force me to read their silly adventures over and over again. I prefer inventing fantasies there and then for the boys’ delight, splicing my whimsy to their imagination and making sail on a starship to unknown shores.
I still remember the first story I spun for my boys.
Mark is 6, Matthew is 5 and Julian is still a twinkle. The boys are cuddled up to Cris and I on the darkened sands of Ghajn Tuffieha. It is past sunset, and a crescent moon has sprinkled a million, million stars over the black vastness. “Where do stars come from?” asks Matthew. And in the light of the crescent moon and the soft hiss of the sea, a story is born…
Once, a long, long time ago, there were no cars, no lights, no television. There was only silence. And in the silence, clouds of butterflies fluttered over the waters of Ghajn Tuffieha, like festa confetti caught up in a gentle breeze. High above them, the moon was perched on the clouds, looking longingly at the butterflies. The moon felt lonely, and asked God: “I’m fed up here on my own. Can you help me?”
God replied: “I’ll see what I can do”.
Suddenly, the sea started to boil with a huge tumbling shoal of big hungry fish. They jumped up in the air, snapping at the butterflies and eating them. The butterflies were terrified. Try as they might, they could not seem to escape the terrible jaws of the fiery-eyed fish. The Head Butterfly fluttered up high and pleaded to God: “We can’t escape… they are going to… gobble us all up… you have to… help us!”
God replied: “I’ll see what I can do”.
The wind changed. A twirling breeze came in from the north, snapping at the waves and blowing the butterflies higher and higher… higher than the cliffs, higher than the clouds, until they were fluttering around the smiling crescent moon.
The moon could hardly believe that he was surrounded by new friends. He gave each butterfly a shard of his light. Their wings shone like diamonds. “Thank you!” said the moon. “Thank you!” twinkled the butterflies.
God smiled his secret smile.
Not all stories have such a happy ending. Sometimes I ask the boys “What do you want in your story this time?” The bidding starts immediately: “Three dinosaurs and a lion.” “No, no: my ball, my rabbit and Cinderella.” “This time it’s my turn: a crazy witch and lots of blood”. I choose the items that catch my fancy, and try to weave them into a narrative. But sometimes these conspire against me, and out comes a dark tale of such dread, such wide-eyed terror, that it curls six-year-old toes and stands five-year-old hair on end.
There is the one of the Wizard of Kenuna, with his great winged tower and the red eye that never sleeps. The Wizard’s old cannon spews terrifying spells on the farmers if they do not bring their dearest and tenderest to his red supper table. No fowl nor beast will stay his ravening hunger. Though sobbing mothers hide their children and pray, the Wizard will have his fill…
Nothing like a good horror story on a winter evening, with rain lashing on the windows and the boys curled tight in their blankets. But when December starts, the boys ask for stories of only one character they love: Bahnu the Dumb Angel. Bahnu is easy to make: just a wide kartoncin cone with a punctured table-tennis ball as a head and paper wings stuck at the back. He is just as easy to like, with his wide lop-sided gem-marker grin and circle eyes that see the world as we do not.
Bahnu grins his way from one embarrassing scrape to the next. He gives the three Wise Men the wrong directions as they travel from the far shelves all the way to the crib in the corner across the children’s room, and Balthazar’s camel gets hopelessly lost in the sand dunes of Matthew’s blanket. Bahnu is one clumsy angel. He bumps all the other angels out of line when he rushes in late for the Gloria in Excelsis Deo announcement. He sings out of tune, trips over a sheep when he goes to tell the shepherds the good news, and gets himself locked in the wrong stable when the three Wise Men finally make it to the crib. The Wise Men chide him, the angels scold him, the donkey kicks him and the sheep baa in disgust.
Bahnu only wants to help. He wants to make sure everyone comes to the crib. He does not mind the angry looks, the unkind words. Do they not understand that everything is worth seeing this sight that passes all wonder?
But God sees Bahnu’s heart. He knows that Bahnu is all flustered because he loves the Child with all of his great heart and all his clumsy body. Bahnu wants to make sure that everyone sees the Child, and kneels down before him. So God puts Bahnu in a special place, right on top of the cave near the silver star, so that he may guide everyone to this holy place.
At first, the boys laugh till they cry, as I act the characters and make their noises all around the bedroom. Clumsy Bahnu has a Mr Bean voice, followed by the deep baritones of the three Wise Men, and then falsetto for the angels and a particularly grumpy sheep. The children’s laughter tinkles the true chimes of Christmas, and even Cris joins in, lured from the preparations of the festive pudding.
But when Bahnu joins the silver star on top of the cave where the Child is born, the laughter stops. The children’s eyes are on the Child in wonder, and I swear good old Bahnu is grinning.
Source: Child Magazine, December 2008