Even If We're Just Dancing In The Dark

Today at brunch, I was wearing a necklace (actually one of Lunea's lovely rosaries) with a picture of Hecate on it. She doesn't look too kind in the picture and G/Son is at a stage where you're either a Superhero or a Bad Guy. He was interested in the necklace and he looked at Hecate and said, "We don't like her." I said, "Oh, yes, I like her very much. She stands at the crossroads when you're not sure which way to go and she points the way." She doesn't really; she simply opens up crossroads when you need them, but I wasn't quick enough to explain it that way to G/Son. Later, when we were watching DVDs, he wanted to wear the necklace and he flipped it over to the picture of a sacred fire and said, "This is my necklace; the necklace with fire."


Later still, G/Son and I were playing in the basement and he opened up the closet where I keep, among other things, the Samhein decorations. Not surprisingly, among those decorations are several large witches. He pulled out the old stuffed witch on a broomstick with her orange-polka-dots-on-black-satin clothing and a metal silhouette witch who holds a basket into which you put a candle. He said of the first witch, "Nonna, is she Oz?" And I said, "She's not the witch from the Wizard of Oz. She's a nice witch. See her nice smile?" G/Son lifted up the brim of her hat and said, "Yes. She's nice. She has a nice smile." Then he turned to the other witch. "But she's mean. She has a mean smile." I said, "Well, maybe she's mean because people were mean to her," and that seemed to work for G/Son.

Even later still, we opened up my computer. My wallpaper is a picture of me and my wonderful circle of women, skyclad, from the shoulders up. G/Son said, "Nonna, that's you and your friends," and I said, "Yes, that's Nonna and that's Miss X, Miss Y, Miss Z," etc. G/Son said, "I like them. Why do you have blue moons on your foreheads?" I said, "Nonna and her friends paint those moons to remind them how special the moon is." G/Son said, "I like you. I like Miss X. I like Miss Y," etc. "But I don't like the moons."

I really don't know what I'm doing; I'm feeling my way in the dark. More than anything, I never want him to be hurt. There's this huge disconnect between what society tells him about witches and my experience of witchcraft and he's not old enough yet to understand. I worry a lot about how much I've burdened his 'rents and how much I'm burdening him by being a witch in a society that's not welcoming to witches. But I just can't lie to him.

Picture found here and on my neck.


Update: To be fair, we spent only about 1% of our time on witches. In between, we played about ten games of Hi Ho Cherry Oh, which I totally would have won were it not for that annoying bird who makes you miss turns. We traced stencils of Batman and hung them on the fridge w/ dino magnets for Miss Thing. We gave Miss Thing a treat and, when she made the ever-fascinating cat puke, Nonna cleaned up the cat puke w/ a wet paper towel. We went outside and walked backwards up the street, blew bubbles on the front step, went and hid in the batcave aka Nonna's shed, made a v long train out of all the Thomas the Tank Engine pieces, and played that we were going fishing w the cat toy. We pretended that the shells that Daddy got a long time ago for Nonna were marshmallows and we roasted them over a pretend fire. We played inside soccer in Nonna's basement and we took all the nutcrackers out of Nonna's decoration closet and pretended that we were cracking nuts with them beside a fire in the woods. We did some art with stickers and we had some grapes and cheerios and graham crackers and ice water. It was a busy afternoon.