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.

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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.