I'm the Witch
I'm the Witch
Or so I was taught by fairy tales
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In a fairytale world, I would be the witch. Not to be nasty: in fact, I am quite happy. Grey and drizzly outside and I am tucked up, my foster cat at my side, her head all warm and comfy on my hip.
My walls covered in books, and I am baking, the scent of it cozy and breadlike in the air. Yet in these classic tales, my life takes on a sorcerous slant.
I am in my forties, single, childless.
I am not the pretty princess, the resourceful peasant girl, the sea-child intent on her own adventure. I am the witch. My baking bowl transforms itself into a cauldron on my counter.
Why do we see older women this way? These are the stories we tell children, their first inkling of how the world works, old women on the sidelines, in cottages, in the deep dark woods.
This is the story: a woman grown older is so reviled she lives away from the village in a house made of flimsy stuff, bread, cakes, stiffened sugar to see through in the windowpanes.
Two children come, also unwanted but young; they eat her house. In a kind of faux motherhood, she takes them in, gives them yet more food, but this is unsustainable. She is no mother. No man makes his home at her side.
She is revealed in all her grotesqueness; in a cottage made of food she will eat the little ones as well, consuming every part of a happy homelife.
Real women tend the hearthfires, so this one is punished with one; she is burnt to a crisp in her own oven.
This is the story, but how does it apply to my life? I admit; I wanted the fairytale. I wanted a prince, the dream I was taught as a child. I wanted children.
I wanted that life, not the deep woods one, not the life of the village exile.
The witch’s life is the one I have. But what I am finding is that real life is not a fairy tale. I know that, of course, but I still found myself surprised at this life, at the joy of it.
I am outcast in my own now-global village; the fairy tales were the first inkling.
There are other hints though. There is an absence of women like me in many stories, on tv, in movies. There are the comments I receive, the questions. Why don’t you have children? people ask, as if there is a story, and one I will tell them.
There are the silences, too. Do you have children? ask the same people, and then at my negative response, they fall silent.
As if they are too shocked to form a response.
But there is something I want to tell them, to tell anyone who asks me about children.
I want to say that I love my life. No husband and I am happy alone, my life with a freedom that adorns, sparkling around me the way spun sugar would sparkle if you made it into windows.
Bread baking in my oven; I don’t line my walls with it, but eat it, warm on a winter’s morning.
Who knew that the bookish child I was, the one who gobbled up stories and legends and fairy tales like they were bread or cakes or even a candy or two; who knew that girl would end up with this life?
This one, herself now living alone except for her familiar-cat. Her books like grimoires on her shelves. My life wasn’t the one I wanted; I admit it. But it is one I love. I snuggle into it, the way you do into warm things, when they aren’t fairy tale ovens.
Let me go back to those stories, the fairytale ones I read as a child, some of the first tales that showed me what the world was like, what I should be like in it.
In the deep woods, I will find a cozy cottage, all made of warmth and goodness and yummy things to eat. The door will be open, a gumdrop for its handle. In I will go: a small cat cuddles comfy on a hearthrug. The walls will be bright with books, as colourful as cakes, as candy.
Outside the world is grey and drizzly, but inside, no. Inside the firelight shines bright and sparkling, bouncing joyfully off spun sugar windows.
Thanks for reading this piece by guest writer Colleen Addison.
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Colleen, this is simply gorgeous. ❤️