Madeline's Healing

Madeline had a tough time in school. She never fit in, tried so hard to, did not know what to do or say, and parroted how she saw others act.

No matter what she did or said, she felt separate.

Instead of enduring kickball or four square at recess, Madeline preferred to find a corner of the playground and carve miniature house plans out of the hard dirt. Then she’d imagine stories of the families who lived there.

These families always had dinner together and told each other about their day. The dad playfully roughhoused with his kids, while the mom indulgently looked on with the occasional, “Be careful, dear!”

The siblings weren’t to be feared or avoided.

Sometimes she put objects she found in the hard dirt rooms.

A feather. The skull of a tiny bird. An interesting rock.

There was a period when Madeline refused to go to grade school. If her ruse of being sick didn’t work, she was put in the car under protest and driven to school, despite the fact she was going to be late. On arrival, she tightened her grip around the glove box handle so hard her mother had to peel off her fingers one by one. Once inside the school, she locked herself in a bathroom stall, forcing her mother to crawl under the door to pull her out.

She constantly lied about being sick to avoid the noise and chaos at school. Finally, she was called into the principal’s office.

Mr. Vaughan was a monolith. He was tall and always dressed in a black suit and black tie. Madeline sat primly, staring up at her as Mr. V invoked the words of Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive.”

Madeline was horrified and humiliated. She also had no idea who Sir Walter Scott was. It only made her hate school more, with particular hate just for Mr. V. Years later, well into adulthood, if she saw anyone who resembled Mr. V, she’d get an instant headache. Mr. V would haunt her nightmares, appearing as a demon in a black suit coming to snatch her away.

Once, in 8th grade, Madeline tried what she thought was a well-thought-out plan to present to her mother. It included moving to Canada, where her older sister studied ballet on a scholarship in Banff. She would live with her sister, and instead of going to school, she pledged to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannia for her education. Seemed very reasonable to her.

It was disheartening when her mother said no.

Instead, her mother talked with the principal, Mr. Sharkey. She finally had realized how miserable Madeline was in school and how she wasn’t trying to be obstinate or lazy. She told the principal, “If my daughter can keep getting A’s coming to school four days a week, I don’t see why she should be forced to go five.”

Amazingly, and because Madeline’s mother was a force of nature, the principal agreed.

It wasn’t all the time she only went four days, but it was enough that her social studies teacher, Mrs. Eberly, often said on Mondays, “Scarlet fever again, Madeline?”

As time went on, Madeline learned to fit in and mask her insecurities, fears, and confusion. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t miserable.

Her teachers in high school loved her because she often asked for after-school help in subjects like math. They felt that showed she was trying hard and appreciated her efforts. Learning was much more accessible one-on-one.

As an adult, Madeline discovered comfort in making perfect miniature houses, with electric lights, tiny food on the kitchen table, tiny cats and dogs fashioned from felt. She was surprised when people wanted to buy them.

Then she made miniature forests because she was happiest there amongst the cedars and pine. This way, she could gaze into her miniature forest when she couldn’t go to the real forest. She made lakes and ponds with ducks and egrets. She figured out how to make one forest scene lit only by the full moon and put it on eBay. She was astounded when it went for more than a thousand dollars. What started as a way to calm herself was beginning to make her a living.

A gallery contacted her and asked to feature her work. She thought, “My therapy is art?” and said yes, please. The hobby that helped her escape was helping her put money away.

Her creations got bigger and more prominent in a miniature way. She made castles and Roman ruins based on actual locations. Since each one was an original, it kept the prices high. She thought once, “I couldn’t afford my stuff; I can’t believe others can.”

People started commissioning her to make versions of their own house or where they were married. She bought a camper van to drive her creations to her clients and her gallery because shipping them was problematic.

She would stop in small towns to snap photos of old gas stations and cafes, which would turn into new art. Sometimes she would donate one to a small town she used as a model, and they would display it in their civic building or library under protective glass. There was even one time when they asked her to come back for a dedication ceremony. Madeline felt accepted and grateful.

One evening, Madeline decided it was time to revisit her school days. She constructed both a playground and the school. She had heard Mr. Vaughn had died some years ago through the grapevine. It would be therapeutic for her, she thought.

She started with the playground. Kids played tetherball and swung on the swing set, while one girl sat on the ground behind the backstop, creating house plans in the hard dirt.

Then she made Mr. Vaughn out of felt and clay. For a moment, she thought she should burn the effigy, and maybe that would stop those headaches and nightmares. It was time to get Mr. V out of her head.

Turning over the figure in her hand and studying the face, with its perfect expression of judgment and sour punishment, she had a thought. Maybe Mr. V was passing on his misery way back then. Perhaps he had an awful childhood where he didn’t fit in but never stumbled on a path to soothe and heal himself as Madeline had done.

Smoothing out Mr. V.’s face, she redid him with a pleasant, loving expression and gave him a bright yellow tie. She made children looking up at him with happiness instead of fear. She thought this was Mr. V’s true self if all his pain was peeled away.

Just as she placed him in the Principal’s Office, an American Goldfinch, in its brilliant black and yellow courting feathers, landed on her window sill, turning its head back and forth as if looking directly at her. It bowed its head, then flew off in a flash of black and yellow.

“What if…?” she thought and then shook her head. “Couldn’t be….” But she still wondered.

It was a few weeks before she realized her headaches had vanished, and she had not one nightmare of a demon in a black wool suit. But she did have a dream of a goldfinch amongst cherry blossoms, singing the most beautiful song she had ever heard.