One of the most primal ways in which fear is programmed into our cells is through language and stories. The songs, rhythms, idioms, parables and tales we hear as babies and toddlers shape our thinking and feeling bodies for a lifetime. That surely is a reason why Struwwelpeter and Noddy, for example, have been much debated and, to some extent, adapted as to their ‘suitability’ for our children and, by implication, our future. The writer Janosch even made attempts to re-write the Brothers Grimm stories, censoring or altering the crueller parts into more innocent or jovial fare.
A case can be made – as Clarissa Pinkola Estes does in Women who run with the Wolves, and as Robert Bly does in his engaging discussion of Iron John – that conflict, rendered symbolically in frightening and gruesome incidents, conveys an indispensable message to our souls (much as the figure of Satan does in the Bible). We need to be aware that life is not without challenges, conflict and, above all, the presence of evil, whether that evil be “banal” and perfectly everyday, or self-consciously gleeful, like Heath Ledger portrays the Joker.
It is my own position that the vital factor is not so much the presence of what is ugly, awful and unwelcome, nor how the ugliness is depicted, but the happy ending. Happy endings seek to redeem the greatest horrors, if not with saving grace, then at least with understanding. Certainly a story addressing children must end or resolve, if not to happiness, then at least to peace and order. If it leaves disturbing questions hanging, it will very likely harm an innocent mind. A writer with the desire to disturb the peace needs to use their discretion as to whose peace exactly it is they wish to destroy in the name of whatever cause.
Two common German rhymes I grew up with have repeated on me willy-nilly throughout many decades. One of them is a proverb, which, however silly one may deem it to be, runs in its groove at the sight of a spider, as follows:
Spinne am Abend Spider at evening
Erfrischend und labend Refreshing and inspiring
Spinne am Morgen Spider on the morrow
Bringt Kummer und Sorgen Brings grief and sorrow
Now any experienced person will quickly realise that these idle, easy rhymes (in the original) can only come from an addict, most likely an alcoholic, whose mood of happiness at sundowner time has given way by morning to a hangover, and the spider – that mistress of endless, intricate creation and renewal – is roped into the human’s tragic cycle of self-harm and lack of will. And language, that treacherous tool, is only too willing to bend to human weakness.
Being one of those ‘sensitive’ people who are condemned to misery because of other people’s carelessness with words and images, I found that the power of those lines continued to force me to feel fear and anguish whenever the sight of a graceful daddy longlegs in the early morning triggered the ‘poem’. It was not the arachnid I was afraid of, mind you, it was the ill-humoured human rhymes.
Until I decided to act. I wanted none of this grief and sorrow thrust on me by ‘good ol’ tradition’ anymore and altered the lines accordingly:
Spinne am Morgen Spider in the morning
Geschützt und geborgen Protected and sheltered [It rhymes in the German]
I repeated this whenever I saw a spider, until my new
rhymes became so entrenched as to be triggered in place of the old, sour lines,
reminding me each time, with a small sense of triumph, of my own true desires.
The second groundbreaking transformation came only two days ago, in relation to a truly horrific song, which my mother used to sing to us blithely as a lullaby. It goes like this:
Maikäfer flieg May beetle [cockchafer] fly
Der Vater ist im Krieg Father is in the war
Die Mutter ist in Pommernland Mother is in Pomerania
Pommernland is abgebrannt Pomerania is burnt down
Maikäfer flieg May beetle fly
This horrible ditty, with its innocuous tune, was triggered for me when I returned the hand-embroidered Christmas tablecloth to the cupboard and tucked it in underneath the hand-embroidered birthday tablecloth. My birthday is in May, and my grandmother’s hands had once upon a time lovingly stitched May beetles (cockchafers), birch tree catkins, ladybirds and four-leafed clovers into the cotton fabric that was smoothed over the table with my candle and gifts each year.
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| Embroidered May beetle |
A spoiled child was I, to be given so much! Indeed, the wars featured magnificently and unavoidably in the transgenerational, mostly silent pain of my family on all sides, not eased by the fact that there were intermarriages with French, British and Jewish individuals, and the merry little melody with its dark lines perfectly captured the bitter contrasts. Historically accurate though they may have been, by the time we slipped into the year 2026, their purpose seemed spent and their energy far from helpful.
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| The birthday table cloth. Obviously I will only iron it when it comes out of the cupboard in May. |
Again, I was gripped by a sudden urge to strengthen myself by means of linguistic alchemy. The mention of the Father and Mother figures in the May beetle song made me think of my parents as they are now – together in a home for people with dementia, both in nappies, my mother half-paralysed in a wheelchair for ... going on nine years in April. When she suffered her debilitating stroke, my father dropped his work, all future travel and research plans, and transformed himself from a pampered, tempestuous patriarch into a patient house husband and carer of his beloved wife. He learned to cook, took her on outings, wiped her bum, and generally ran the household as best he could at the tender age of 78. (Although I am the eldest daughter, I could not assist as I had been expected to do, as my husband was busy dying and I had to tend to him at the time.)
That was the one time in my life that I witnessed my mother eating with a hearty appetite! She put on so much weight with my dad’s dishes that we had to replace her kiddies’ wheelchair with an adult one. She’d been a pretty discontented wife all her life, and her frustrations had made her an expert at tiny, toxic remarks to and about my father, whose love she diligently kept at arm’s length, and whose retorts and behaviour in turn I leave it to you to imagine.
With my father’s self-engineered career change from award-winning physicist to devoted minder of my mother, she fell in love with him all over again, and her respect for him blossomed in a completely new way. Despite this, however, he never managed to upstage two rivals (whom he himself wisely never perceived as rivals), namely, Beethoven and the sun. Since her stroke, the sun is definitely my mother’s first love; as for Beethoven, he has always been the one she wants to be the first to greet her when she gets to heaven. Or wherever. She isn’t altogether sure about post-mortem geo- or celestiography, but that’s beside the point. She has always been touched by and grateful for my father’s goodwill and total absence of jealousy in this regard. I confess I have seen him just a little bit envious of her adoration of the sun every now and then. But let’s be bighearted enough as to let that pass.
My parents directly inspired my reconstitution of the May beetle song as follows:
Maikäfer flieg May beetle fly
Der Vater hat den Sieg Father has the victory
Die Mutter trinkt das Licht der Sonne Mother drinks the light of the sun
Beide haben ihre Wonne Both are blissful, having fun
Maikäfer flieg May beetle fly
I wasn’t sure about the word “victory”, as it’s of course closely tied to violent conflict and war. I ran the lines by my sisters, who also felt that it was wrong. My youngest sister (she is seven minutes younger than my middle sister, as they are twins) – anyway, my youngest sister came upon this perfect solution:
Maikäfer fliege May beetle fly [above]
Der Vater hat die Liebe The Father has the love
We are officially shedding the cruel karma planted through our soft ears into our bodies, and are literally singing a new song. I look forward to my birthday. It might take a lifetime to get to re-write ‘a harmless ditty’, but more’s the pity of you don’t!
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| My parents on their diamond wedding anniversary, in the sun, perusing their wedding album. |
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| Diamond wedding anniversary outing. |
