Prince Charming

To my dearest granddaughter, Juliet Guinevere.

Happy birthday, my darling! Sweet sixteen: such a milestone of a birthday! Such romance, such hope, such maturity not yet marred enough by age to relinquish fairy-tales and fantasy. Though I hate to be apart from you on such an occasion, distance matters not for I do cherish and enjoy the relationship of pen-pals we have developed over the years. 

On this, your most happy day, I have a story to share with you. And sweet sixteen is the perfect time in which to receive it since your wisdom is still young malleable. So, without further ado, please indulge this old woman as I recount a tale, as they say, as old as time…

I used to be the little girl who believed fairy-tales held up the entire world; that they were the ancient and mystical bedrock of blackness of night, of golden dawn, of pullers and givers of the tides. I used to believe secrets and mysteries were the first languages; song and dance the first effigies; love and romance the true calling of this singular world into the vastness of space and time.

In the schoolyard, real princesses floated by me upon gentle winds. I saw the gulf stretched out between myself and them, but still I did not lose the hope of fairy-tales. I did not let them take from me the breathtaking feeling of coolness as a glass slipper is guided, perfectly, onto my foot. Nor did I let them destroy the infantile hope that I nurture in my chest every night that tells me one day, one day, I will be rescued. Rescued and transformed. Transformed from ashes into beauty, just as Cinderella was. Transformed from something hated to something cherished, like Snow White. Transformed from dirty and small, to tall and shining. Because I knew that real princesses weren’t born, they were made; made from the defiance of Jasmine, the courage of Belle, the strength of Pocahontas, and the resilience of Snow White. 

The fairy-tales were in me, as deep and as reaching as the poison in the Apple. My Prince Charming would come, right? To save me from the utter unfairness of my life. He would see the unpolished gem that I am and polish it to a gleaming point, blinding and real and powerful. He would save me. I just needed saving, that’s all. I just needed saving.

But when would he come? The answers in my heart sang sweetly to me every night. But the real answer, the truth, was a hundred apathetic shrugs and a hundred more cruel, fleeting moments. 

And then, right when I thought I might just disappear, he saw me. The Prince Charming, my Prince Charming. And I knew somewhere that he was too good to be true. But I let myself be swept up, because he was the first one who was strong enough to lift me and all that had happened to me. 

But what if Prince Charming and the Evil Wizard are the same man? I ask myself this late at night when he should be beside me but I have no idea where he is. Or when I find something in his beautiful castle that just doesn’t seem right. But I turn my eyes from the wrong things, and I make up his own excuses for him in my head and lull myself to sleep with those lies because I realize that I don’t get a happily-ever-after unless I can love both of him: the good man at dawn and the different man at dusk.

Didn’t I love him? Didn’t I want him to crown me? Didn’t I want to walk through his echoing halls trailing rivers of gossamer and roses? Didn’t I want to browse his endless library with orchids and ivy in my hair? Didn’t I whisper, in my previous desperation, that I would do anything for my Prince Charming if only he’d but show up? Didn’t I? Didn’t I ask for it? Didn’t I ask for it?

Say that I can live like this! Say that I love him! Say thank you! Say you’re welcome! Say anything but the truth; the truth that you begged the very stars for which turned out to be a lie.

Because if I can’t love him back, then the happily-ever-after I saw so clearly in my head turns into ashes on a cold stone floor on which I must sleep. Worse, on which I must live.

Sometimes, my mind can play tricks on me; tell me that I’m no good, that it’s all hopeless. But I have discovered this: I am loved and important and I bring to this world things that no one else can. So I hold on. Because fairy-tales can be dark, dark as the night sky without the innocent twinkle of the stars. And all this I know too well. Like everything in life, fairy-tales hold within them both the good and the bad, the light and the dark. But there is yet hope. There is always hope. 

Being the smart young woman I know you are, I suspect you know now what I am about to say because it has been coming for a long while. You’ve known it through the emptiness and the tears, even through the ethereal bliss and impossible joy. You’ve known it through the ages, through the eons of sunrises and full moons. You know that the only Prince Charming that you’ve ever prayed and screamed and begged for has been with you all along.

And so, my sweet darling, I leave you with this gift upon the sixteenth year of your birth. It costs nothing, but it is priceless. And if you don’t see that now, trust your old granny, you will at some point. Here it is, and here it will stay. Written down so you can read it everyday.

The only Prince Charming you’ve ever longed for, the only Prince Charming you’ve ever needed, is you.

I love you, my good girl, forever and forever,

Grandma.