Rescue, Kiss, Repeat

I don't know about you, but I'm loving ABC's new show, Once Upon a Time. It's one of those rare TV shows that keeps getting better and better with each episode.

In the first few episodes, we see Prince Charming (whose real name is James, we learn), wake Snow White. Later, we learn how Snow and Charming met. It was the kind of meet cute that involves a lot of flirtatious squabbling, adventure, a grudging admiration and a certain amount of chemistry. She saves him. He saves her.

Rescue, kiss, repeat.

I love that.  I love it because it's a truer model for a real-life happy ending in marriage. It's not just the prince rescuing the princess in the classic model, or the princess rescuing the prince in the feminist model. Long-term love involves both.  Marriage is committing to rescue each other, over and over again. It's having each other's backs, it's being strong for each other.

Fairy tales will always have a special place in my heart, but I'm troubled by the lack of stories that involve courage on behalf of both men and women. East of the Sun, West of the Moon is one of the rare examples of a couple who must rescue each other. The prince, as the bear, rescues the girl from poverty.  The girl rescues the prince from the troll princess.

There is still a happily ever after for them, but both the man and the woman have had to work for it.

And that's how marriage is, isn't it? Courage is required for both the husband and wife to fight for and rescue each other, facing down despair, discouragement, illness, and injury in battle.

You never know how many battles you'll face in marriage, or when the next one will find you. The happily-in-betweens? Absolutely worth the work.

Me, myself, and fairy tales

It's been memory lane in the Lodge home recently. Last week it was all manner of Mermaid nostalgia, and tonight it's princesses. Dancing princesses.

I've gotten hooked (and by "hooked," I mean, "can't put it down, this is kind of embarrassing, haven't been this stuck in a book since the Twilight books, but at least it's much better written" kind of hooked) on Juliet Marillier's books since one of the blogs on Writer Unboxed mentioned her Daughter of the Forest in a lovely blog about fantasy and fairy tale.

My fairy tale addiction has been very, very well observed and documented. In every library I visited, I knew where the fairy tale section was. I loved the pictures, the ethereally beautiful princesses in their gowns, the illustrations of Walter Crane:

Hilary Knight:

Gustave Doré:

Susan Jeffers:

Paul O. Zelinsky:

and K.Y. Craft:

The Twelve Dancing Princesses was one of my favorites. And why not? For a princess fan, you get a lot of bang for your buck. I can't tell you how much I loved this book, every page.

I was still more excited to find that Juliet Marillier had done an adaptation of Twelve in her book Wildwood Dancing. I picked it up at the library today, and looked at the cover. Then really looked at the cover. Because the art looked familiar!

I checked the jacket to find out who did the cover design. Kinuko Y. Craft. Seriously! I was so excited to find that. How perfect could that be?

I'm twenty-six now, and since I've married an engineer, I no longer desire to marry into royalty. Now that I'm a writer, I don't particularly want to be a princess when I grow up (mind you, this was my career goal until I was, like, nine). But there's still something about fairy tales that holds a special place in my heart.

In this blog, Sophie Masson wrote:

"Fairytale is less grand than myth, and less ’serious’ than legend, but it is more romantic than both. More human. And yet more magical. More geared towards not the great ones of this world, but the little people."

It's my hope to one day get to write a fairy tale, or a fairy tale adaptation. Right now I'm writing Amish, but it won't be forever. I won't be a princess, but at least I can write about one.