Building Block

What makes a castle?

Building Block



I remember building castles as a child.
Piled pails of grainy mud I'd let dry in the sun.
Toothpick flags from Sunday comics flew aloft.
I was a Princess of Camelot, I deserved a castle,
did I not?

There was a castle on the top of the mountain
to our east. Daydreams had knights in shining armor,
always tall and handsome, always on a white horse,
always ready, willing and able to rescue the princess.
One winter's night, the castle burned to the ground.

Fire engines couldn't conquer the icy road to mountain crest.
Skeletal bones of stone arches, blackened ribs of chimneys,
windblown ash pages of fairytale dreams wafted down to the lake.
Twelve-year-old bullied child's dreams charred.
My grandmother said true heroes rarely lived in castles.

In Germany at seventeen, I worked scrubbing stone
in a castle on the Rhine. High summer and it was frigid.
Wet, chapped hands scrubbing thirty years of abandoned neglect
for warm, mushy stew and a place to lay my head.
Never felt less like a princess.

Naive, even as years calendared by, I fell for lines
uttered by men who were no heroes. But I learned, refined dreams,
and wrote. Charged by King Arthur himself, I wrote
and refused to give up Camelot dreams. A prince in essence
became the man I sought.

And I learned important truths.
My parents' dreams of the debutant
marrying the lofty physician or the storied attorney
were just that: their dreams.
I simply didn't fit that mold.

Another truth emerged and long before
the internet made it 'a thing.'
I truly was beautiful. I was not only good enough: I was worthy.
One day I realized there had been nothing
wrong with me to begin with!

So, was there a happy ending to my fairy tale?
Indeed. My knight in dented armor is a welder--
he can fabricate all the swords we may need.
Our dazzling castle is a three-bedroom brick ranch
not made of sand to wash away in the storm.

He builds dragons made of steel, flame-throwing burners, and
magical whatsits that do who knows what. He's good, he's kind,
he's honorable: he's the best. He makes me happy; says I do the same
for him. I build worlds with words, he builds stories with steel.
Wizards we are with what we do, and are.

He is my hero. I answer King Arthur's charge. My grandmother was right.
Sure, there's a mortgage on our castle-home, times calendar by
when we needs must muddle through. And we do:
we have all the magic anyone could ever need.
Our castle is built of heart--the best building block of all.