We Can’t All Be Snow White
By Teresa Vilaseca
I threw open the French doors that lead into my backyard: The sky was blue, the grass was green (okay, it’s always green - it’s fake), and the birds were chirping. I could practically see Snow White, surrounded by adorable bunnies, singing a duet with a bluebird perched on her hand. Such a scene was exactly what I needed. Earlier that morning, I had answered the phone in that hazy state between asleep and awake. “He passed this morning,” my mom said. I think we both knew that staying on the line would be too hard for both of us, so I said, “Okay,” and we hung up.
My dad had been sick for several years, his mind dwindling until he could no longer remember my name and his body wasting away in a slow progression. Even though I had been expecting the call that he had finally succumbed to his Parkinson’s disease and dementia, I had never expected to get it in the middle of a pandemic.
Grieving a loved one is always disorienting, but there are rituals that guide us and help us process the emotions. During a pandemic, you lose access to those rituals. In a time of social distancing, there was no memorial service for my dad. There were no eulogies. There was no gathering or hugging or grieving together. Apart from the burial, I had nothing to guide me.
And that’s when I decided to open those French doors and embrace my inner Snow White. If my yard was the only place I could go to grieve, then I would turn that yard into an enchanted forest and attract the kind, caring animals that would love and support me through a pandemic and my grief.
I stepped out onto my patio and heard the familiar crunch of dead bees under my feet. That’s right, dead bees. Our neighbors have a hive full of sick bees that choose to die in our yard.
I took another look around my yard. Instead of the lush green forest that every Disney princess deserves, it was filled with parched, fading plants. A black widow swung from the web it had spun amongst the trees. As a lifelong arachnophobe, my heart pounded at the sight of its spindly legs. At the center was a fig tree that, after eight years, had yet to give us figs that didn’t taste like Styrofoam. As a Los Angeles resident, I knew that I would have to adapt and become more of a desert climate princess.
A red dragonfly darted into my line of sight. Well, if Snow White could do this, then I could too. I greeted it with a “hi” and stretched out my hand as a landing perch. It dive-bombed into my face, stopping a millimeter away from my nose before circling my head and preparing to dive bomb again. I ran for my life into my house.
When Snow White ran into the enchanted forest in a state of despair, the fluffy little chipmunks and baby deer nuzzled against her, helping her get back on her feet. A forest full of animals protected her from the evil queen. Didn’t I deserve my own cute and cuddlies?
A butterfly fluttered through the yard. This I knew I could do. I ventured back outside, stretched out my hand, and held perfectly still. The butterfly swooped around my head and floated down. It landed. On my hand. I was clearly on my way to princesshood now.
It stayed long enough for me to lean in and take a closer look. It wasn’t exactly what you would call pretty. Its wings a muddy brown with a yellow outline. Its body was furry, and its legs looked a whole lot like they belonged to a black widow. Did I mention I’m an arachnophobe? My heart pounded, my body tensed, and my butterfly took off. I later found out this type of butterfly is called a mourning cloak. You know, as in a cloak one wears after a death.
Nature had never been something my dad had taken much interest in. He had grown up in a city known for its art and its literature and its good food, and I had inherited my love of all of those things from him. Did I really think an insect could help me heal?
But we were under quarantine, and I couldn’t go to a museum to admire art or even eat in a restaurant. Instead, it was up to me to create the enchantment. I started by sweeping up the dead bees and the rotting figs, and then focused on the succulents. I replanted them in a variety of colorful pots throughout the yard, hoping to create a landscape that would attract the adorable beings that would become my animal besties.
The next morning, I opened those French doors to another perfect sunny day only to find dirt scattered across my yard. Overnight, something had dug through all of my succulent plants, ruining my carefully constructed design and nibbling away the leaves. Snow White’s animals had helped her clean up her cottage, but the culprit of this midnight raid was nowhere to be found. I was on my own.
As I was clearing away the dirt and chewed succulent leaves, a scruffy, scrawny cat peeked out from under my fence. It was no baby deer, but, finally, something with the potential to be cute and cuddly.
Ever since I was a child, I have always adored both dogs and cats, but my dad was opposed to getting a pet. No matter how many times my siblings and I begged for one, he refused. Until one day my mom brought home a puppy. Like most animals, this puppy followed around the one person that didn’t want him: my dad. Before long, my dad became as attached to that dog as it was to him. I like to think that I had something to do with his newfound love of pets and that he would be smiling down on me now as I helped this stray cat.
The surest way to a cat’s heart is through a can of tuna. So, I fed it can after can of tuna. This orange cat with the round face gobbled it up, licked its lips, and stretched out in a patch of sun in our yard. I even sang to it (off-key) to lure it into my arms. It crouched into attack mode, swatted at my hand, and ran away.
“You can’t scare me,” I said to the cat. “I’ll make a happy housecat out of you someday!” The cat didn’t respond, and I didn’t feel like anyone was smiling down on me. This whole Snow White thing was way harder than it looked. I gave up on my enchanted forest. I gave up on finding my safe place to grieve and find comfort and support.
But grief, much like a pandemic, doesn’t let up so easily. A few days later, my backyard was still the only place I could go. I stepped outside, hesitant, but there were no animals in sight. No unattractive butterflies or hungry cats. I was in a regular backyard. Nothing magical about it. Rather than sighing in relief, I felt abandoned and slumped into a lounge chair next to my husband. With nothing to distract me, my thoughts turned to my dad. When it comes to the concept of heaven and hell, I’ve always been a skeptic. But my Catholic father believed in it all, and I worried about his soul. Not whether he had made it to heaven, but whether he went as he had passed, in a state of confusion and forgetfulness from dementia, or if he went as the essence of who he was, at the prime of his life, free from illness.
And that’s when the red dragonfly gently glided in and landed on a string of lights above our heads. I pointed it out to my husband who wondered out loud what a red dragonfly represents. I shrugged. I didn’t care anymore.
“Ooooh,” my husband said, “that dragonfly is for you.”
“What do you mean for me?”
Reading off of his phone, he said, “The red dragonfly is rare and represents transformation after the loss or death of a loved one. It means the person’s soul is free.”
I slipped my sunglasses over my eyes and hid the tears that started to fall. I spent the rest of the afternoon crying in grief and relief, with my red dragonfly watching over me.
I didn’t get to grieve my dad in the usual ways, and my yard never magically became enchanted. But when I finally took a moment to sit still and let the grief seep in, I received the exact message I needed in that moment.
My succulents are still a half-nibbled mess and my grass is still fake, but my animals return to visit me often, and I always make a point to greet them. There are my mainstays: the mourning cloak butterfly, the red dragonfly, and, yes, the sick bees. And then there are the other ones that I’m getting to know. The hummingbirds who try to fly through our windows and stun themselves. The praying mantis who turns its head toward me in acknowledgment every time I say hello. Oh, and that stray cat? He is now my happy housecat.
It turns out I never needed to be Snow White, and the animals in my yard are not the cute and cuddly type. It was the message they had for me that was important, and sometimes messages of love and healing come to us on the wings of a slightly aggressive dragonfly.
Epilogue
About a year later and after two more surges in the pandemic, my backyard was still my place of comfort and solace, apart from a new strain of insatiable mosquitoes. On one particularly hot day in late summer, I decided to cool off in the one corner of shade I could find. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of red whiz by. When I turned my face up to see what was there, the red dragonfly had turned back around and was flying straight toward me as if it had recognized me. Familiar with its penchant for diving into my face, I didn’t flinch this time. I greeted it as it swerved and then circled my head two times before flying off into the blue sky. An hour later my mom called me to let me know that my aunt had passed away. It may have been a different loss, but I know that the message was the same.
Thank you for reading, may there be a red dragonfly in your life, and, as always . . .
Stay Curious.