Diary of a mad fairy wrangler

A three-foot-tall Spiderman is staring up at me deciding if he should “web” me or give me a pass for referring to him as “Spiderman” and not his preferred moniker “Spidey.” Meanwhile, several girls, one with pointy ears and her sister (similarly attired) are summoning me to hear about the letters they just got from their fairies.

For tiny beings, the Fae take up a whole lot of real estate in my life. You may have seen me talk about this on The Kelly Clarkson Show on two separate occasions or read about it in the news. The Fairy Tree is even in the Library of Congress as a "Witness Tree" that has stood watch, seeing the pandemic through the eyes of thousands of children.

How did I get here from being a respected journalist?

The spell for becoming a Fairy Wrangler is to mix compassion with collective boredom and all of the anxiety of the first lockdown. Sprinkle it liberally with glitter, wrap it in tulle and then just get out of the way.

We were all, as the TikTok sound proclaimed, “Bored in the house. In the house bored.”

When a child had a meltdown at our Little Free Library during the very first lockdown here in Virginia because it didn’t contain any fairy books I went outside and told her a fairy story I conjured. So it began.

The little girl asked, “Do fairies live in your garden? It looks like a place where they live. Are you in charge of the fairies?”

“Yes,” I said not knowing what I was signing up for FOREVER.

Long story short, one fairy door was added to a Crape Myrtle “Fairy Tree” in front of my house along with a box to take in letters to the fairies and another where hand-written replies from the fairies are picked-up.

I didn't anticipate teens, Old Dominion University students and adult writing to the Fae to help blunt the trauma and stresses of the pandemic. The fairies have a slew of helpers online who range from social workers and therapists to linguists. Last week followers on Facebook helped the fairies tackle a series of letters from two little girls who are here visiting from France and don't speak or write English.

This quickly became our neighborhood’s version of Stone Soup only with magical beings. Parents, children, grandparents, retirees and magic loves have brought everything from fairy houses to child-size, hand-crafted wooden tables and benches as offerings to the magic that’s put down roots in my front yard.

Over 3,000 rubber-stamped, carefully colored-in, handwritten letters from the fairies, pixies, elves, sprites, gnomes, hobgoblins, hedgicorns, trolls and dragons, plus an eternally growing village of their houses have been life-altering for everyone involved.

Once the fairies made the news I was urged to create a website but still staunchly refuse to monetize the magic because that’s exactly what makes the magic go away. Everything is done for FREE, no grants or sales or fees. Total labor of love.

The fairies are using their celebrity status to generate help for others. Our Artist-in-Residence is Clair Landfear, age 20. Like may sensitive folk Clair has been welcomed here and given a Safe Space where she can paint, sculpt and make new friends.

She has created a Fairy Tree Lane signpost, a seven-foot-tall rainbow giraffe and many other features but refuses any form of payment.

Clair is a massive fan of Actor Jeff Goldblum so I opted for a creative way to repay her by contacting his agent and sending a video of her works at the Fairy Tree. No, of course I don't have a relationship with Hollywood agents but if the fairies have taught me anything it's that magic happens when humans take the risk of dreaming.

The stunning result was a spontaneous series of phone calls, first to me and then to Clair which is one of the greatest fairy wins so far. She ended up sending him the stunning oil on grass mat painting that she was working on when he called.

“Good is not a thing you are. It's a thing you do,” is something that both Kamala Khan and the fairies believe and live every day.

There have been so many hilarious, touching and tear-jerking encounters between the Fae and humans that I decided to start a running blog on them here weekly on Vocal.

Welcome to the Fairy Tree.