An old story

A little over a year ago, I was looking through some old journals and found this story, which I’d written in December 1999. At that time I was working my first real job — teaching high school math part-time — and working through some difficult and painful stuff about myself, God, and my relationships.

The story is called “The Crow and the Pitcher, or, A New Narcissus”

“The Crow and the Pitcher” was one of my favorite Aesop’s fables. A crow wants a drink out of a pitcher, but the water level is too low for her beak to reach. So she drops pebbles in until the water level rises enough.

The myth of Narcissus tells of a boy who becomes so enamored of the “person” he sees in a pond, a person he can’t have, that he dies of sorrow at the water’s edge. In psychology there’s a concept of healthy narcissism, in the sense of proper self-love, partly developed through mirroring, which is getting information about oneself from other people and one’s environment.

For my story, it’s helpful also to remember Jeremiah 2 and the image of God as a spring of living water.

Here’s the story:

A girl was thirsty, and alone. Oh, she believed in water; she had seen pictures, had heard of others’ experience. But she had none, herself. She spent her days wandering, alone, as the forest creatures and city people milled about their business. Sometimes her steps meshed with theirs, so that it appeared she was dancing with them. But her steps were only her own. In the dance of the others she could make an appearance, but she did not belong, and was not understood.

Whenever she found a hole in the ground, her hope and fear rose to her throat. Reaching hurriedly into herself, she took out rocks, jewels, dirt, straw, and all sorts of things, and threw them as deep as she could into the hole. She felt if only she had enough things to throw down, surely the water would rise, displaced by the pebbles. If she only had enough, she could drink. And as she drank she would look, and see her treasures held and caressed by the water.

But time after time, her efforts proved fruitless. No water rose for her to drink, no water bathed her pebbles. Each one disappeared as she threw it, and was gone. Every hole was empty, receiving her treasures only as a black hole absorbs stars. It does not keep and cherish them, only devours.

And for a while she would stand, or kneel, there at the edge of the hole, searching the darkness for some sign of response, hearing the emptiness of the echoes. Perhaps a tear, a single tear, would glisten on her cheek as she rose bravely to walk on. Or perhaps she would lie there for days, alternately crying out and beating the ground, or lying still, tightly curled, holding her breath against the ache. But however she reacted, time continued; and soon enough she was wandering again.

In another old journal entry (3/24/2000) I found this quotation from Anne Lamott’s novel All New People:

…it was Camus, I think — that Narcissus was transfixed by his own reflection, because he was searching for something lovable in it.

About a month later (4/19), I remembered a song called “So Much Mine,” by The Story; something one of my junior year college roommates would often play:

Where’d you get that dress?
Where’d you learn to walk like that?
Don’t talk back
Tell me where you’ve been - maybe I don’t want to know
Oh, Lord, why me?
You were so much, so much mine, now I reach for you
and I cannot find you
So much, so much mine, now I reach for you
and I cannot find you
So much mine
So much mine
So much mine

It’s about mothers and daughters — and now I’m one of each — and it could also be me, singing to my lost self.

It’s funny — until the post partum stuff hit, most of this blog — and even my journaling during pregnancy — was fairly upbeat and superficial. I wonder how much I was subconsciously avoiding subconscious depression and anxiety, and if I had not avoided it, would the post partum stuff have hit me less hard.