It had to be, but it would not be easy. In their now inevitable quest for Wonder, Faye and Frank would be navigating through hostile seas.
“Aaahh! We are ssssooo closssse, my ssssplendid dissss-im-u-latorssss.”
From the shadows, a group of conspirators watched the goings-on below them with obsessive interest.
“If we can keep the grown humansssss busssy and disssstracted, they will yield their offssssspring to our influencessss!” The leader hissed with anticipation, licking its lips as if ready to tear into a savory piece of meat.
“We will ssssoon have a world in which few quesssstion and even fewer ex-ssssplore beyond the borderssss we sssset for them.” Another watcher added, shuddering at the dangers they faced if their plans to contain the humans failed.
“The fleshcarriersssss are ssssooo in-ssssipidly sssstupid — eassssily pressssured to conform to The Presssscribed Order — under the right circumsssstancessss,” the anxious watcher added, reassuring itself that everything was under control.
The commander nodded in agreement.
“Yessss. They will, indeed, accept ssssamnessss of thinking…if we can get at them early. It issss ab-ssssolutely necessssary to possesss their sssspawn…it isss all about the little onessss.”
Bravely embarking into the unknown, the quirky courtship of young Frank and Faye quickly grew into an enduring partnership in which the soon married Mr. and Mrs. Faultsom wasted no time in pursuing Wonder together. Then, in just the blink of an eye, their children came along and, naturally, the Faultsoms talked often to them of their Wonderly pursuits and belief in the mysteries that everyone they knew seemed to discount and scoff at. Despite disapproving outside forces, Faye and Frank taught their children to adventure and “imagine-ate,” asking: How? Why not? What if?
“Let’s just suppose,” they would exclaim, “and let’s discover the possibilities!”
And, oh my, each of the Faultsom children were quite the firecrackers! And their mom and dad were determined to light their little fuses so they could burst into Wonder’s sparkling world of incredibilities, despite the fact that this was viewed as quite abnormal by the parents and townspeople around them. It was precisely because of this, that Faye and Frank were soon facing a mounting threat. You see, although it was expected of them, they decided that they absolutely would not surrender their children to the facilitators of the local Center for Child Development and Life Preparation. These were the people who were in charge of making sure all children were developing in “alignment with The Prescribed Order.” Faye and Frank were quite alarmed by the way children were being pressured to accept a way of thinking and believing that seemed to be smothering any possibility of Wondering. The local Center was another one of what the Faye and Frank referred to as “Grown-Up Factories,” that were poised on the prominent corners in practically every community. Mr. and Mrs. Faultsom knew that these places were somehow killing the imaginations of the children who were left there for any length of time. At all costs, their kids must not be subjected to The Grown-Up Factory, for The GUPF’s, as they called them, had nearly killed their own capacity for Wonderment years before.
When she was a little girl and The Prescribed Order was beginning to gain wide acceptance, Faye had flitted up to her GUPF facilitator one day, bubbling over with stories of the faraway frontiers she visited in her imagination. When the facilitator couldn’t convince her that these experiences were nonsense and not to be believed in, Faye was sent away with a big black X-mark pinned to her blouse and a note advising her parents to take her in hand or there would be consequences. Little Faye had cried all the way home only to be scolded by her mother and father who warned her not to talk about such things ever again. Despite this, she did not stop believing. Frank was also given the mental version of a knuckle-knocking slap across the back of his hand for expressing a belief that did not align his facilitator’s “appropriate opinion.” Imaginative thinking was not an approved part of The Prescribed Order or it’s central plan.
Now, on any given morning, the Faultsoms would see neighborhood kids climbing into transport vehicles, being carried away and led into sterile-looking buildings for hours and hours at a time. The couple took note of these children with grave concern as they came home terribly perturbed, cross, and out of sorts. Faye could sometimes overhear them talk about how the kids at The GUPF would practically eat each other up at the lunch tables.
Frank and Faye also knew that there were tests, assessments, and evaluations given to the children in the factories and, as a result, the kids were beaten down and sort of shriveled up inside. It seemed that the experts at The GUPF were always trying to get the children to prove something or other about what was being impressed upon them, while never giving them the space and time to “suppose” about anything truly interesting at all. The factory facilitators were also fond of saying things like:
“Your poor parents and grandparents simply aren’t equipped to understand what we know you understand. After all, since they were kids, we humans have made so much progress. We clearly don’t need the old traditions, ancient myths, and silly fancies they believed in anymore.”
This alarmed the Faultsoms who had discovered echoes of their own supernatural experiences buried in the memories of the aged. They had encountered more than a few old folks who seemed to know all about Wonder. However, these people were often called “feeble-minded” by the factory facilitators who said that they should be ignored. But my! Such radiance flickered in eyes of these elderly explorers. Faye and Frank loved to hear their remembrances and catch glimpses of Wonder itself on their faces.
One afternoon, the couple came upon a very enchanting little old lady ambling down a country road. She wore a big, floppy, daisy-covered hat and a set of purple galoshes, although the day was clear and sunny. Tickled by the skip in her step and the way she would frequently stop in her tracks, gaze at the sky, and let loose an adorable giggle, Faye and Frank slowed the pace of their bike ride and stopped to introduce themselves to the elderly sprite. As they approached, they could hear her singing a haunting bit of a tune that was, after every few phrases, punctuated by her tinkling laughter.
“Miss Filippa” was quite happy to make their acquaintance, but after no more than a moment of small talk, she curtseyed blithely and took her leave. Apparently uninterested in social conventions, she seemed happily absorbed in her own world…or in some other. Just a few paces down the road, however, she stopped abruptly, turned about, and addressed Faye and Frank most earnestly.
“You know, my dears, when I was a child, we had wide-open spaces to explore…in our thoughts and beyond! Why, we could go awanderin’ and aponderin’ to the edge of the universe and back, just to see what there was to see. We found things that your generation has lost. No…That isn’t so! These things haven’t been lost, they’ve been hidden. They’ve been teaching children not to see for decades now…and teaching you all not to listen to those of us who do see. But…I shall go on seeing…no matter what they say!”
At this, she took up her little tune once again and skipped away down the road, leaving the Faultsoms standing there stirred to tears. They knew Miss Filippa was right, for the kids who went to factories had, for the most part, lost their trust in the stories their grandparents had to tell and even the guidance their parents had to give. They seemed to be in training to become human cogs in some sort of universal machine, without the time to stop and ask what they were doing, or why. Worst of all, the kids who came out of The Grown-Up Factories seemed to have had their inner “believers” disconnected.
No, this simply would not do for the Faultsom children. For even though Frank and Faye had never been all the way in, they had experienced enough to know that Wonder did exist and they just knew that it was filled with mind-boggling, brain-exploding treasures waiting to be explored and contemplated. They were insistent that their very unique and curious children, Constance, Charleston, Chance, and Chief would not be pressured to conform.
This decision, however, not only made the Faultsom family social stand-outs, but also alienated Frank’s parents, Fredrick and Regina Faultsom, who were thoroughly conventional. They grew cold and distant toward their son because of his embarrassing belief in Wonder and his marriage to Faye, whom they considered to be quite unsuitable and far beneath their son’s status. And, when the children came along, Fredrick and Regina became increasingly agitated about Frank’s and Faye’s unorthodox parenting decisions.
“Oh, that odd, odd girl!” Regina would cry as her gravely disappointed husband would shake his head.
“Yes, my dear, it would seem that she has ruined our Franklin. He has simply lost his senses. How can he allow her to poison the children with all of that Wonder nonsense!” Frederick would gripe.
But despite his parents’ vocal disapproval, Frank could not be deterred from forging a way forward for his family that would preserve and protect the extraordinary beauty he found in their unusual way of life, but this proved to be a very costly choice.
For having stepped out of line, Frank lost his father’s endorsement and came under the suspicions of many of those in the elite circles in which he had spent his youth. He was even discretely dismissed from his position in a well-respected enterprise because his boss concluded that Frank simply wasn’t “one of them” any longer. Following this, he ran into many an abruptly closed door, until at long last, he did find work as a product designer at the lowly Peerless Pencil Company (The PP) and made a go of it there. For a man of Frank’s education and ability this was a bitter pill to swallow, but he was resolute about his convictions and would not turn back, no matter how much his parents and peers pressured him. No matter what it cost him, he would not force his family to “fit in.” So, off to The PP he went to make his way in the world.
Knowing that his burgeoning little family was often misunderstood and looked down upon, Frank built a fence around the wild and woodsy garden of their funky vintage Dumble Street house to keep out the prying neighborhood snoops, as Faye took over the supervision of the kids’ education. With inexhaustible enthusiasm, Frank’s untamed bride threw herself into the possibility of all that Wonder might offer their children. Transforming the Faultsom home into an expeditionary launching pad, each morning she pointed the kids toward new heights of discovery and hit the ignition button. And when, one by one, they returned from their flights of fancy she would gather them up in her arms and squeal with delight at each childish adventure story recounted.
“Oh myyyy! What a magical morning you have had, dear heart’s! Was it terribly tickly when that ladybug inspected your fingers?” Faye giggled as if she was being tickled herself.
“Did you really hear her singing as she opened up her spotted shell and stretched out her wings? Why, of course you did! Did she say goodbye before she flew off? No? Well, ladybugs can be very rude…they tend to be quite proud of those spots and you know what it’s like when one is too impressed with oneself.”
Faye was often moved to tears as she drank in the oceans of green and blue there in the wide eyes of her untainted and trusting little ones. No child of hers would wear a black X upon their hearts if she had anything to say about it. She and Frank would do their level best to protect Constance, Charleston, Chance, and Chief from the kinds of wounds they had received from the imagination-crushers in their own lives. No matter what, they would carve out a space in which their kids could embrace the extraordinary. And so it was that Mr. and Mrs. Faultsom grew a very irregular family, making sure that in addition to reading, writing, history, and math, the kids had hours of free time to noodle, explore, experiment, and go with Mom on her very unconventional “field trips” into unknown realms.
The kids also relished their time with Dad, especially when they got to go with him on his jaunts to the local warehouse store. These outings inevitably turned into something more like “retail safaris” on which they would bag the big game of industrial lots of toilet paper and canned chili. It was on these expeditions that Dad had a way of keeping the children grounded and of letting them know that he supported Faye’s fanciful approach to family life. For you see, ever the more gregarious one of the two, Faye delighted in coming up with new itineraries for her husband and family to try out — attempting trips in and out of Wonder from various places.
Frank would often chuckle and shake his head as his wife pitched another one of her goofy schemes to push the envelope of their confidence and experience in these unexplored lands. He reeled her in, from time to time, lending his sound wisdom and quiet confidence as he learned, through the years, to support and gently temper her daring spirit. And when he didn’t, it could be more than a bit chaotic at the Faultsoms’.
One famous episode went down in the annals of the family’s history as quite a funny failure. While the kids in The GUPF’s were often stuck droning The Prescribed Order songs they were fed everyday, Faye enrolled her kids in yodeling classes to help them channel their rambunctiousness, hoping that this somewhat kooky vocal enrichment exercise would turn their kids’ constant vociferousness into something of a skill. She envisioned her young mountaineers hiking and singing as they summited snowcapped peaks, and jumped off into Wonder’s waiting arms with their voices echoing through the canyons of their fancies.
Within days of his children’s first yodeling lesson, their long-suffering father put an end to further yodeling when he simply could not take another “Diddly-odely-oh” from his enthusiastic warblers. But he could not contain the silly jokes that the kids repeated over and over for days!
“Knock knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Little Old Lady!”
“Littleoldladywho — hooo-hooo???
“Didley-oh Doh — doo-hee — heee-heeee!” The kids would crack up as they bounced around the room.
Such was the unsuppressed silliness of a typical Faultsom free-for-all, so Frank figured he needed to keep a firmer hand on the tiller of their family’s direction. But in this instance, it was far too late. The kids’ heads were all crammed full of “Littleoldladywhoooos!” for weeks afterward and these produced welcome distractions for them from regular schoolwork which, of course, tended to distress their parents. From that time forward, Frank and Faye could often be found talking long into the evening, after the children had gone to bed, mulling over the latest Wonder-filled predicaments they had skirted. Together they plotted their next adventures and brainstormed about ways to navigate the often threatening waters of the world outside their home’s harbor.
Cautiously optimistic about the possibilities that lay before them, Frank headed out each day to “slay the dragons” at The PP. Planting a kiss upon each of his dear Faultsoms, he drove off to take on his pressured-filled penciling, while Faye and the kids got on with the business of Wondering.
Shell-shocked by the fallout of her oldest daughter’s words, Faye was still awake in the early hours of the morning ruminating over her memories which were melting into impressionistic scenes of their blossoming bunch of Faultsoms and her brave, but often faltering, motherhood. Like all young families theirs was a life that maneuvered through the bedlam of a busy household. But amid their familiar daily activities, Faye and the children — Constance, Chance, Charleston, and Chief — learned to Wonder around.
At first, more often than not, days at home were mundane, ridiculously uninspired, and unproductive by all accounts. Still, Faye knew that she had to cultivate a place for Wonder to grow in her children’s imaginations, and so it was that she could be overheard by some nosey neighbor or other, leading a charge that went something like this:
“Now, children, today we are going to find Wonder. Are you ready? Who knows where we might find it…and where we might find the door we must open to find our way in? I do know that we will never get there if we let our imaginations rot! You see, your imagination is the place where you make space for Wonder to open up before you. It begins with beauty and fascination. So, children, look around you and find some
thing gobsmackingly marvelous and clever. Or, better yet, find something terribly average and simple and really look at it, go inside it, examine it, crack its secret code open, and find its hidden design, and then be thankful…so thankful that your heart will explode inside you. Be thankful that you learned to see in a new way because you have found something Wonder-full and then…go there!”
So the kids, about whom you will shortly learn a great deal more, followed Faye, toddling off into the world charmed by a little wisp of something that caught their fancy or launching out with great anticipation into cities, woods, lakes, puddles, sand dunes, attics, libraries, old-folks’ homes, grocery stores, or even math problems, piano lessons, and chores…searching for portals into Wonderland.
It would be most satisfying to report that the Faultsom offspring embraced these Wonder-seeking excursions without resistance, like the blessed angels we all hope kids will be, but far too often they went about their days with quite a bit of grumbling and fussing.
Slowly and clumsily, the family waded into the unknown as Faye endeavored to help their children see beyond what was right in front of them in order to look into deeper mysteries and explore the landscapes around them with what they called “presentness” exercises. They were all going to need to be very aware and attentive to find ways into Wonder and she knew that these ways were definitely not open to those who recklessly indulged themselves in boredom or numbed themselves out with mindless distraction and purposeless stimulation. So, Faye was a real bulldog about TV and video games — cell phones and texting would have driven her quite mad.
To their dismay, however, Frank and Faye learned that instead of awakening appreciation and awe in their children, “presentness” could often make the Faultsom kids quite crabby and out of sorts, for they couldn’t be more observant and aware and not be affected by all that they encountered. When things weren’t to their liking they became much more ill-tempered. They sometimes got stuck focusing only on those things that disappointed them. The kids noticed that sad things were more mournful, and scary things more frightening. Hunger pangs became peskier, humidity was stickier, a chilly wind was colder, skinned knees were “stingy-er” and, when they really paid attention, the annoyances they felt, as they crammed their oversized personalities into the family van, were oh, so much more irritating.
Mrs. Amazing and the Seed Page 2
