Reflections in the Fairy Gardein

 "Reflections in the Fairy Garden" as it appeared in the Laguna Beach Independent, December 5, 2025

                                                                         By Norma Sadler

            During a Christmas break from work, Vivian sat in the Fairy Garden at the Laguna Beach Library. With her drawing pad balanced on her knees, she was all set to work on a charcoal sketch. Around her, kids came and went, peering into small habitats or hunting in the garden for butterflies.  
    She put on her glasses, squinted at the paper, then concentrated on a hidden fairy home near the Christmas tree. Shiny ornaments caught the light. The garden grew quiet. A shadow crossed the paper. She turned her head.  Nothing there. She closed her eyes, daydreaming in the warm sunlit afternoon. When she opened her eyes, a fairy fluttered in the air before her. Nonsense, she thought. A pine sprig dropped from the tree onto the paper and slid down to the bottom. She continued drawing.  
    'What are you doing?" a voice asked. On the roof of a tiny home, a fairy stood in a white dress with her wings folded behind her. 
    Vivian was sure she was in a dream.
     "Who are you?" She asked.
    "I'm Poppy. I live here." Flouncing her dress around her, Poppy settled herself at the top of drawing. "What are you doing?" She asked.
    "What I am doing is an outline of what I want to paint later," she said. "This fairy home reminds of a dollhouse that I decorated each Christmas. I could place my doll in any room I wanted and rearrange the furniture around her. For Christmas Day, holly berries and leaves filled the space. Postage stamps of a wreath and candles that I glued on the walls became permanent paintings. I hung a mirror in the bedroom for my doll to see herself."
    Poppy glanced at the drawing. "I've only seen my reflection in pools of rainwater in the garden, but I would be happier if I had a mirror in my own home. You don't have a mirror in your drawing yet. Can't you draw me a mirror?"
    "I could, but – "
    "Please do it," Poppy said. "Our garden was named for an anonymous fairy who lived here, but no one in charge bothered to ask any of us if we wanted mirrors in our homes."
    Vivian wasn't frightened, but things were getting stranger and stranger. 
    "I can't draw you a real mirror in charcoal," Vivian said, "but I could outline a round shape." She drew a circle.
    Poppy looked at it. "I'm not in the mirror you drew," she said.
    "See, I could sketch your face in, but it wouldn't be in color. You're made up of shapes and colors. 
    "I am?"  Poppy asked. She glanced back at her wings, then down at her white dress. 
    "Yes," Vivian said.  As she tried to figure out how to draw Poppy in the mirror, she felt herself drifting away. Then she looked up. Poppy was gone.   
    A kid ran by. "Hey, look," he yelled.  A Monarch butterfly glided through the garden.
    Vivian lifted the sketch pad to see her work more clearly. The fairy home was a cutaway of two floors. In one corner of a bedroom, a pine sprig lay below a mirror,  postage stamp high.  In the mirror Vivian could see a reflection in full color. The face had Vivian's nose, mouth, and even the glasses she wore. White gossamer wings fanned out behind her. The scent of pine filled the air.    

Too Many Tomatoes: A Poem

 

Too Many Tomatoes

Alone now, my mother
Is like my Polish grandmother.
She is growing
Too many tomatoes.

A six pack starter kit.
Two plants dry up.
She buys another six pack.

Now ten plants occupy
A very straight row,
Mounted against steel poles.

Now growing strong
With bits of egg shell
Spotting the soil.

Now tied up with torn strips
Of white sheets,
Yellow blossoms form.

Now bright red tomatoes
Hang heavy, vines droop.
Too many tomatoes.

I am there for her and the harvest.

• 
  

Krystal's Notebook: Not a Romance

From the back Cover:

Krystal's Notebook:  Not a Romance published as a paperback 2025

 You might know a girl who loses a boyfriend, then has to figure out how to survive without him.   It isn't that easy. By writing in a notebook for her English class, she sorts out her life. In the school office, she assists the secretary, and in doing so, has access to what happens to other students and teachers. Trying out for the lead as Eurydice, she meets Gary, cast as Orpheus.  They will have to spend time together learning lines and blocking scenes.  But then, she notices David, new to her high school, who walks by her locker on the way to a class.  Eventually, she wants to know everything about him.  Could he become her one true love?

Troubled: A review of Rob Henderson's book

 Not like in Hillbilly Elegy, where J.D. Vance survived in a rural environment with his grandmother, Troubled shows us Rob Henderson, having his family fall apart, leaving him to bounce around in foster care systems in small or large cities in California. Even after he is adopted, his world is not okay as his parents divorce.  He never had a family through his life that he could count on. What I think is important is his position that family and bonding to those who care about you is way more important than educational goals and social achievement in our society, as if attaining success can win out over the need  for a sense of belonging.
    Limousine liberals with luxury beliefs have created a world of many troubled children, young adults, and adults because of their zeal to assume belief structures for others that are not the same as for themselves. To them, it's okay if those below them in society are not encouraged to get married, then have children.  It's okay for them to have helter skelter lives, with no marriages, children out of wedlock, and homes where police have been defunded and crime is now even worse.  How can elites be so arrogant (my word, not his)?  It is because elites do get married, stay married, have children, and can protect themselves from crime by burglar alarm systems, body guards, and the luxury of their addresses.
    This memoir is about more than that though.  Henderson spent lots of hours reading books that dealt with persons having tough lives.  By reading those books, he gained a sense of understanding of what he was going through. I loved how Henderson talked about his own life and minimal survival until he joined the Air Force, where he finally attains a sense of belonging.  This book is one for those troubled among us so that they can seek a way out even if the odds are against them. Perhaps this book might help to change the way institutional foster care functions in this country and also help individuals in the system cope and find a sense of belonging that we all need as children or adults.

The Crystal Elephant

                                     The Crystal Elephant
                                                  by
                                        Norma Sadler
    
    Jim and Annie lived in a small rental cottage on Cypress Street in Laguna Beach. On the day before Christmas, he wanted to buy a present for her, something different, something she would really love.  Each year he bought her a Radco ornament for their tree.  This year there would be no tree as they were going to have Christmas with their now grownup children and their grandchildren in Dana Point.  
    Jim drove down to Forest Avenue, at a time early enough for the streets still to be not crowded with traffic and before the lunch crowd showed up. He parked and walked to a store on the corner  In the window, crystal shapes caught his eye, but large sculptures on pedestals would never fit in their living room. Maybe there would be small figurines inside.  
    A young woman in a bright red sweater and black slacks stood behind the counter.  She smiled. "Can I help you?'   
    "I'm looking for something in crystal, like a figurine maybe," he said.
    The sales clerk turned and pointed at the shelf.
    "Here we have a Baccarat tiger. It's 200 dollars."  
            "Maybe a smaller figurine," Jim said.
             "Sure," she said, and walked over to mirrored shelves that held crystal animals, perfume bottles, abstract pieces, even geodes.  By itself in a corner, smaller than the other pieces, stood a lone crystal elephant.  
    "May I see that elephant?" Jim asked.
     The clerk picked it up carefully from the shelf and handed it to Jim.
      The elephant, solid crystal and elegant, would fit in Annie's connection of elephants from around the world.  It was different though from the wood, silver, and pewter ones that she already had.  She loved them and could remember how and where she acquired each one.
    Jim remembered that the first and most important elephants came from Walter, her brother, who served in Africa under General Patton and followed him in the long march up the boot of Italy. Walter carried three wood elephants with small white tusks in a knapsack for Annie, his only sister.  He mailed them from post-war Paris to her. A father, mother, and baby elephant reached Annie and Jim when they were expecting their first child.  That was the beginning of Annie's collection
    Now in their living room Annie's elephants traversed the mantle, making their way through pine boughs and lights.     .  
    "I'll let you decide," the clerk said. "Let me know if you need anything."
    Jim turned the elephant over.  A smooth flat bottom with an etched number signified its history in a Swedish company.  He noticed that unlike Annie's other elephants with their heads down, either standing still or walking through imaginary jungles, this crystal elephant raised a trunk in triumph or happiness. The elephants on the mantle could use another companion.
    Jim turned to the clerk.
    "I'll take this elephant. How much is it?" he asked.
    "It's fifty dollars," the clerk said.  
     He took out his wallet, paid with cash.
    The clerk wrapped the elephant, cozy in a box, then in silver paper with a red ribbon. She handed the package to him.
     "I don't know who this is for, but this crystal elephant is a perfect gift," she said.
     Jim nodded. An elephant for Annie to remember.

Norma Sadler is a member of Third Street Writers, Laguna Beach.

 

Elvis: A great story in a movie

 Elvis is one of the best dramatic movies ever, and I have no idea why it didn’t win any major Academy awards.  Taking the story of Elvis and creating, not just his life story, but also the pathos and tragedy of an international singer, who starts from nothing, becomes the most popular singer in the world and then falls from grace (Graceland), loses his marriage, takes illegal drugs, and then faces a coming financial ruin all by the age of 42.  How much more Shakespearean could someone’s life get?  

Like Mose Allison and Charley Pride, who also sounded black when they sang, Elvis too became popular with blacks. This film is a tribute to how a white kid, growing up in a black neighborhood obviously loved the blacks he knew and loved their gospel/church music.  His earlier music paid tribute to those songs, but later, which I did not know, he wrote many of his own. He became friends with B.B. King,  He made sure that blacks were part of his prominent lineup of singers in Las Vegas, because black groups like the Imperials were the best. . Earlier going against segregation laws in the South, he got on the wrong side of the Southern Democrats who wanted him jailed.  His activism was born of values that transcended the old-fashioned rhetoric of that time.

Austin Butler IS Elvis,and I was transported back to the 1950's easily with his character’s looks and voice.  Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker, Elvis’ conniving manager gets kudos for his excellence in body makeup a Dutch accent, tinged by the South and the part he plays..  Amazing characters, scenes, and story.  Best of course is the story.  You wouldn’t be taking a chance on this film now on Netflix. Press the button on Elvis.

LETTERS TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER

                          Letters to My Mother and Father

                         After Typewriters, Jeff Rovner Artist

    I am snipping the Sunday crossword from The Idaho Statesman to go along with a letter sent home.  It’s just to my mother now, but back in 1973, puzzles went along with the letters to both of them.
       At first, I wrote longhand and not very often.  At UCLA, even though I borrowed a typewriter to write the never-ending repertoire of papers for different courses--The Domestication of the Cat,  Irony in Porter’s Ship of Fools, Poison Imagery in Hamlet, I still wrote very short letters home.
    Then in graduate school, married, with a newly purchased Hermes portable typewriter, I completed papers on Renaissance literature, and I typed longer letters.  Still in graduate school on a Ph.D. program, I typed my way through papers on Oscar Wilde and John Hawkes.  Shifting keys and locking them in time and  place, I created papers on values and creativity on my way to finishing my degree.  I wrote letters telling my parents about my research, about our prolific gardens attached to married student housing at the UW-Madison, about the car battery freezing when it hit -30.
    The “a” key started to stick about l983, and I was propelled into word processing on an IBM computer.   My sporadic letters became weekly, single spaced sheets that I’d send with the  puzzle.  I could hear my mother’s voice as she sat, working a puzzle at her kitchen table with the white tablecloth, as if I were right next to her.
    “You were the English major, so who is the main character in For Whom the Bell Tolls, or what is the French word for “lake?”  Sometimes I filled in spaces with a few words in ink before I sent them.
    Although my teaching schedule was never the same, I wrote at six in the morning or on the weekend.  Somehow that personal writing cleared my head  for creative writing.  The letters became a way of enticing myself into writing manuscripts that later could become poems, stories, or novels.
    My father died in l99l.  I continued letters to my mother about family, my job, and events in my life.  In a short story that I was working on, I wrote that nothing was happening to my characters.  They were just standing there, oblivious to my ideas.  I was so angry at those characters that I wrote to my mother to tell her that I had placed them all on a raft out in the middle of a lake, and the raft was sinking.
    “What a terrible thing to do,” my mother said in a phone conversation back to me.  She called this time, did not write, and became part of the next generation without knowing it.
     I think now that my letters were limited monologues, with time for me to sort out my life  as my letters flew to California.  When my computer had user friendly graphics, I placed small images on the pages -- a rose (my father’s  favorite flower) and a woman golfer (for my mother who played into her eighties).
    On the computer, I learned to copy and paste images in sequence.  Now across a page, a row of horses galloped, cheetahs ran with the same exact stride, or wolves howled in the same sitting position.  Then once, a frantic cyclist, obviously me, a mountain biker here in the west, racing toward some imaginary finish line, writing more, publishing more.
    And so, along with the letters and the crossword puzzles, I finally sent my mother a short story.  Presto, ready to go.  Like magic, really.  I pressed the print button.  The one-page letter, the crossword puzzle, and the added short story.  Sent off.  No longer sinking on a raft, my characters were flying home.