Once upon a time and long ago I sat in a second grade classroom on a wintry afternoon, the radiators hissing and motes of chalk dust sprinkling the stuffy air. I was tense, my hands primly folded as instructed, and aching for the teacher to read aloud another adventure of Ratty and Mole boating on the river before I journeyed home in the cold alone.
Today the expectant child, forever capable of wonder and hope, is alive in each of us and still sometimes sits around a fire in a prehistoric cave awaiting a story. We are tense, our spirits crushed by a heartless leader and his increasing injustices and cruelties. We await the archaic and mythic storyteller, one who will tell us the truth, tell us how to survive while being assaulted by a continuous flood of lies. To tell us that change and better times will come. All humans retain that essential need for the stories that tell us where we came from, how our journeys may evolve and, as importantly, how to laugh at the absurdities along the way.
For a week or so I fantasized that I could create a new story after discovering that a woman named Kunegunda was an ancestor of mine who lived in 17th century Germany. I loved the name, which can be translated as brave warrior, and foolishly conjured the idea that some secret strength lingered in my genes; yes, I could somehow resist the influence of the patriarchal system, once again gone terribly terribly amok. My sister simply quipped that it was a great name for a cat! Admittedly, Kunegunda was far more apt to have been a traditional German housewife than one out protesting against the patriarchy. Furthermore, we need to find a story that everyone can believe in. A story that embraces us all.
Our world is painfully out of balance. Throughout history, patriarchal systems have told stories that either slay the female deities that were once relevant or cast them as silly impotent beings. There was Baubo in ancient Greece, an irreverent bawdy creature who made Demeter laugh when Persephone was taken to the Underworld by pulling up her skirt to expose herself. She offered wit to a saddened world. And Grandmother Spider, the Creator, still thrives in several Native American cultures but is tragically ignored by our own. She is the wisdom keeper. She made the world with her interwoven strands, thereby linking all beings together in a web of creation; an intuitive grasp of biological reality.
During times of great technological change and subsequent chaos, the failure to acknowledge the two genders vitally complementary roles results in countless acts of vicious misogyny. And when the leader of a nation is a convicted felon and a malignant narcissist, more and more women are subjected to bodily harm and verbal disdain, victimized by mens’ imaginary superiority. Yet, it is also important to remember that the majority of men also suffer in this brutal system; war alone takes a terrible toll on their bodies and souls, both during battle and afterwards. Nor is crippling depression an exclusively female experience. Hierarchic and arbitrary male expectations assail mens’ self-esteem and well-being differently, perhaps, but as seriously as it does women’s.
Writer Barry Lopez once said, “Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” I like to envision men and women as coequals; a partnership essential to the survival of the species. I see us together around that ancient fire, our inner children listening and trusting that we will create a new story that offers a tale of change and healing from the many fabricated antagonisms we now endure. We don’t easily or quickly surrender to despair; we are not constructed so. We have never lost that stubborn belief that the majority of people are good and kind and brave and will eventually prevail over the soulless amongst us.
Margot Fleck lives in Northfield.