Fairy Houses

If you know my dad, you know he’s kind, soft-spoken, and generous.  If you know my dad well, you know he’s also very, very creative.

So the other day, as I made our farm scavenger hunt for the wedding, Dad said he had an addition – fairy houses.

My dad isn’t a fantasy reader, and I don’t have a distinct memory of his deep appreciation for Tinkerbell. Yet, here he was, doing something beautiful and whimsical for us and for the young (at heart and in body) for our wedding.

Later that afternoon, he traveled the trails here and built these three beautiful residences for our fairy population.  He even placed one near some “significant beads,” i.e. the Mardi Gras beads Meander ate as a puppy and then deposited for us to find on the trail.  They are now considered fairy dust.  (And they are also now very clean.)

I keep thinking of the two young girls who created such elaborate systems to help people believe in fairies – the Cottingley Fairies. (Okay, they were hoaxes, but still, the belief and dedication of the girls and the public’s desire to believe is beautiful.) There’s something we all want of the magical in our daily lives, right? Something that says there’s more than this corporeal world we see and touch and smell.  Dad remembers that, he knows it, and he is helping us all know that the whisper of wings is just possible if we pay attention.

So when you come to visit, you’ll have to look for these little houses . . . I expect the fairy population here at God’s Whisper will grow, so you never know where you might catch a glimpse of their homes.