Fairy Tales for Children Above Thirty

By Betty Sam Mathew

An adventurous life isn't always about conquering a mountain, crossing a desert or even soaring through the skies with a parachute. At times it's about opening your eyes to find that the life you are seeking has come in search for you.

But . . .

How do you take the plunge and let the crest of the moment carry you when you are used to keeping a tight rein on time?

How do you tame the lioness within when motherhood exposes a fierce protectiveness and the sound that escapes your lips every time you open your mouth is a roar?

How do you fall into step with the beat and the rhythm of the dance when tango lessons in Buenos Aires become more about control and confronting fears?

A little imagination and a pen transform everyday experiences into fairy tales until they are exuding excitement and reeking of sweat until they become that extraordinary adventure right in the middle of an ordinary life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781512790016

Betty Sam Mathew

Betty Sam Mathew was born in Germany in 1977 of Indian parents, and grew up in Switzerland. She is a physician and writer. Her passion for the sciences has her dissecting and analysing lifes experiences and re-assembling them in the form of short stories with a pinch of humour and a tad of imagination. She lives with her husband and two children in Basel, Switzerland. Visit the authors website at www.binspace.ch.

Book preview

FAIRY TALES

FOR CHILDREN ABOVE THIRTY

BETTY SAM MATHEW

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Copyright © 2018 Betty Sam Mathew.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Interior Image Credit: Betty Sam Mathew

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9002-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9003-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9001-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909620

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/30/2018

Contents

Acknowledgement

Preface

King of the Beasts

The Power of Love

Take My Hand, and I’ll Take Yours

When the Ocean Met the Sky

The Firebird

Waiting and Watching: Lootera

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Bridging Cultures

Metamorphosis

The Day I Sprouted Wings …

An Offering of Fire

Lost in Translation, or The Inverted Heart Language

When I Get Older, I Wanna Be an Apple Tree

When the Lighthouse Lost His Light

It Is Fulfilled, or The Child Is the Mother of the Woman

A Secret: Pass It On

I Had a Dream

Redeeming the Man Who Sold His Soul

Unveiled

The Many Faces of God

A Channel of Love

The Other Side of the Worthless Coin

My Ugly Baby

Maha Gauri, or Loving Ugly Baby

Strong Magic

Turning Water into Wine

The Lost Treasure

A Long, Long Way from Home

A Christmas Story

Happy Ending

Tango or Love

How the Willow Came By His Name, orBy the Rivers He Sat Down and Wept

Moving Time

The Heart of the Matter Is a Matter of the Heart

A Newborn Day

I Will Give You a New Heart

Happy Valentine’s Day

All Things New

Sacred Space

Even the Mighty Oak Was Once a Nut Like You

Permissions Acknowledgement

To my father,

who taught me to be fearless.

To my mother,

who taught me never to give up.

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words. A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis

Acknowledgement

I feel an inexplicable pressure manifest itself as I sit down to express my gratitude.

As if in an effort to give vent to the pressure, a childhood memory appears from out of nowhere: It’s bedtime, and my mother is sitting beside me on my bed. We are at that part of prayer where I am meant to be thanking God for all the things He has done for me today.

I have a mental picture of myself running in reverse through the whole day, trying to remember every gift given that day (only the good ones, of course). As I run, I am haunted by a thought: If I don’t thank Him for everything, He might withhold gifts from me tomorrow.

More than thirty years later, as I reverse-run through my life in the hope of not missing out a single person I want to thank, I feel haunted by the same thought: Hopefully, I won’t forget anyone, lest I … Nearly forty years old, I finally realise what my mother wanted to teach me all those years ago. Gratitude has nothing to do with exchange. It’s about acquiring the attitude that holds the giver, not the gift in the centre and recognises the giver as the gift.

And so here, I would like to thank every single person I have ever encountered, whether he has a name or not, whether he is close or distant, whether he walked with me a moment or a lifetime.

Every encounter has shaped and formed me, and the experiences flow over into my writing. Without every single one of you, I would not have been able to write this book.

Thank you for coming into my life as a gift.

Preface

I was missing a friend. Overwhelmed by my own need, I tried to make light of it, only to find the feeling intensified in the face of indifference. Finally, in an attempt to find some peace of mind, I sat down to write.

It astonished me how utterly the eight letters I miss you failed to express the space the experience itself took up. Unable to conquer the space, I looked for another approach. I considered giving the feeling some substance – some mass to the thoughts, if you will. And mass, Albert Einstein has shown us, is very closely related to energy.

I concluded it was energy I was converting when giving words to my thoughts – an incarnation of sorts. I liked that; as a writer I was transforming energy.

In the case of the missing feeling, it turned out, an experience that weakened me when I alone experienced it, strengthened both of us when it was translated into something that could be shared.

But writing is more to me than just converting energy; it is a little like walking:

I write, because the writing itself is therapeutic. Often I write because I am going somewhere – and that kind of writing gives me a new approach to an old problem. But sometimes, just sometimes when I write, it feels like flying – and that kind of writing makes for stories. As if the act of writing is a matter of flapping my wings until my feet no longer touch the ground. By writing, I fulfil my deepest dream – of flying.

Finally for all the beauty life has offered me, writing is my offering to life.

King of the Beasts

I have a tiger sitting beside me; our very own Tiger.

We’ve had him since he was a cub, and I was merely four.

The mark on his forehead, 王, is the Chinese character for king.

He truly is majestic, our Tiger.

With his nearly three-metre length and his three hundred-something kilograms, he is ten times my weight.

From what I know of tigers, they are noble and lenient.

Slow to attack, rich in gentleness, baring their teeth only to show strength and authority.

Unfortunately for our Tiger, his sovereignty is only skin deep.

He’s very, very fearful.

It must have to do with his vision that he fails to recognise me when I walk toward him with shoes that make a yet unheard sound. From his hiding place, he will wait until he hears the voice, that he recognizes as mine, calling him. Only then will he venture out.

My poor Tiger, who is only a