I’ve been thinking a lot about Pippi Longstocking and wishing I too could lift a horse with one hand, live in Villa Villekula with only my pets and a chest of gold coins, and wake each morning to do 50 somersaults for exercise.
I tried one somersault just this morning–I’m still recovering.
Inspired by Pippi, I have tried strapping sponges and scrub-brushes to my feet to clean my floors, ice-skating about my kitchen, but it ended up making more work for me to clean up, so now I just strap on my roller skates if I need to sweep. Everything is more fun on roller skates if you ask me.
And while I draw the line at rolling my giant cookie dough out on the kitchen floor, local children have been known to call me “The Cookie Lady” because of my love of baking.
With Pippi’s joyful collision of mismatched socks, oversized shoes and radical imagination, I recently wondered, how does Pippi process her sorrow? She is an orphan, alone in the world, and while it sounds enchanting to live at Villa Villekula with only her horse and pet monkey for company, (and occasional visits from Tommy and Annika), she must miss her parents.
As I am always on a quest to find new ways of processing my own grief and loss, I decided I should look into this.
Pippi’s mother died when she was a baby, so Pippi visualizes her Mom watching her through a hole in the sky. She regularly waves up to say, “Don’t worry! I can always look after myself!”
I decided I should try this too. I miss my Mom, in a heart-aching-breath-taking-way. It comes as I go about my daily business like a slap into a dark swamp of deep sorrow. Today I tried waving up to the clouds and shouted to my Mom, “Don’t worry! I can look after myself.” Weirdly, it worked. It pulled me out of the swamp and back into this world. Hmmmm.
Pippi’s father is “missing at sea,” and rather than accepting that he might be gone, Pippi decides he was blown overboard and became a King on a South Seas island and that he is coming back for her one day.
I love this idea, though some killjoys might call it denial.
I say “Whatever gets you through the night.”
Maybe my Dad has become a mischievous King of the “Wild Things” (he would fit right into that children’s book) and Kim would be the Merchant of Marvels sailing on a “Ship of Dreams” scattering stardust (she fits right into that children’s book and even carried around a velvet bag embroidered with patchwork stars. She filled it with glitter to toss on me and anyone who needed a pinch of fairy dust).
While I embrace unruly chaos and radical imagination, I also am one who lives firmly planted in truth. Wherever my beloveds are, they aren’t here with me.
And I miss them.
And it hurts.
Pippi reminds me that when my heart starts to ache in that unbearable way and I get bogged down in my swamp of grief, it might be time to write letters to my Merchant of Marvels and my Island King in my “Book of Sorrow,” a handmade leather journal from Florence with the Three Graces dancing on the front. I fill it with my heartbreak and longing, glitter washi tape, snippets of poetry, dragonfly wax seals, photographs, and all my love.
And now that I think of it, I do kind of live in my own version of Villa Villekula with my four pets, all named after Jazz musicians, except Princess, {full name–Princess-Pumpkin-Cream-Puff-Chanel-Senorita-Smushface} who is, of course of royal lineage and bears her royal name.
I can’t lift a horse with one hand YET but I can lift a 22-pound dog in each arm. (They don’t really like this and wiggle uncontrollably until I gently set them down on all 4 paws.) I don’t sleep upside down in my bed with my feet on the pillow, but I do try to do a handstand every day so I can view the world upside down, and though there is the occasional groan as I get up and down, I am 57 after all, I love how this makes me feel.
It sparks my inner-Pippi, the wild daring disobedient girl, a joyful rule-breaker who avoids the straight lines and jumps right into the big adventure.
Grieving is messy business.
