Grumpy the Gargoyle sends Christmas Greetings to Googlers everywhere, from his home in the Shenandoah Valley…

I know, I know…it’s two days before Christmas but, you see, it’s bright and sunny today, and my new friend might not be in such a medially social mood (if you get my drift) 48 hours from now, so take it while you can, is all I’m saying.

When I was a small child, I fancied that I would grow up to be the sort of person who could handle with a certain degree of grace and aplomb most everything that might happen to me as the years went by. After all, I had started my creative life on the dance floor when I was six, learning that listening to the beat of the music, having a kinesthetic sense of the space and people around me, and being solid on my feet would, more often than not, guarantee that I wouldn’t end up splat on the floor, ego-bruised and body aching all at once.

But as all dancers eventually learn, the body has its limits – sinews and tendons and ligaments and muscles and joints protest at their over, extended, or flat-out misuse, suddenly announcing, all too visibly during a performance perhaps, their refusal to go along with one’s determined and stubborn “Let’s entertain the Public once again, shall we?” plan. While one might not end up sprawled on the stage, exactly – there might be a decided limp, a lack of spring in one’s jumps, a lagging behind the beat, a lack of synchronicity with the other dancers, or an off-center and noticeably wobbly pirouette, all combined to culminate, at movement’s end, in an embarrassed and forlorn Exeunt Right.

But the interior recesses of our minds and hearts and emotions can be pushed to cooperate seemingly forever – when there isn’t a visible bruise it can be very easy to talk oneself into marching forward no matter the result, no matter the circumstances. For we have all been culturally taught to Suck It Up, to Stop Whining, to Put on Our Game Face, to Make the Best of It.  Admirable attitudes to strive for to be sure, but which, when misguided, can lead to denial, disaster and dissatisfaction.

2012 has been a Year of Lessons for me, for all of us I think, one that has been uncomfortable and challenging and to which I have responded, far too frequently, with considerable grumpiness rather than with considerable grace.  Ah, me, but this is my truth.  

After having finally arrived at a place of acceptance about living in Kentucky, far from the home I love in Virginia and my little apartment in New York, in response I fashioned plans to write more, to fly more, to dance more, plans that were dashed mid-year when a vast amount of water spread through our home and my attention had to turn to fixing, mending, preserving and restoring a place I loved but could not live in.  How odd.  It was such a time-consuming effort that I was pulled away from literally everything I wanted to spend my time doing and had convinced myself were self-preservatory and healing endeavors.

I came to wish that my physical body would rebel because then I would have had an excuse to say, “I am not making this drive one more time.” But ’twas not to be. Seems I was meant to fix, mend, preserve and restore a home I loved but could not live in. When hurricane Sandy hit suddenly I no longer felt crazy.  I had been telling myself that I should be able to hit a switch somewhere, like I was a Waring Blender, and simply not care where I was living, telling myself that all houses, all States, all physical spaces are the same and that I was lucky not to be living in a tent in the middle of the cornfields. But when I watched all those videos of men and women and children pouring through the remnants of their domicile memories, rummaging for any scraps of their pasts to take with them into their unknown and uncertain futures, I realized how much we all lie to ourselves about what we need to keep us grounded and feeling solid.

The dichotomy is that no matter how much time, effort and money we spend creating it, there really is no such thing as safety and security. We can’t plan how things are going to turn out. How many times have we seen a brilliant athlete begin their journey, only to suddenly end up a heap on the ground? How many times have we seen a perfect and lovely home by the seaside in one photo, only to see it vanquished by water’s power in another? How many times have we seen the face of a smiling child on one day, only to have to accept that their smile was for yesterday but only the memory of it for today.

Two weeks ago I was sitting outside in the Ft. Valley Nursery thinking about all of this and turned to see this Gargoyle staring at me.  Our house was almost ready to move back into and I imagined him saying, “Take me with you and I will guard your house. I will never let anything happen to it again.”  But I left without him because I felt it was absurd to spend money on a stone Gargoyle that hardly anyone would ever see for a house that I could not live in.  Absurd.

But that night I couldn’t get his stern face out of my mind and in the morning I went back and fetched him, saying, out loud, “I shall call you Grumpy.”  The cashier laughed.  And I swear we could both hear him respond, “Excellent.  I shall be the grumpy one, so that you don’t have to be.”

I have slept very well since he has been at the front door.  And I feel decidedly less grumpy…

Giselle