crickets

Filly remembered growing up, watching her mom sewing projects. She made all the stockings for Filly and her four sisters, sewing little felt jack in the box’s, Christmas trees and balls on the front of the stockings along with sequins and beads.

Her mom made ornaments too out of felt, which were carefully stored each year in tissue paper, to be brought out again at Christmas and put on the tree. Her mom taught Filly how to sew dresses and how to use a pattern and a sewing machine. But before she learned how to sew herself, she would watch her mom “create” at the dining room table. Her mom, to her delight, made full sized stuffed animals for them. Filly was amazed for example, at the giant mother goose, her mom created using a pattern and a sewing machine and the giant Humpty Dumpty.

So Filly would go stand beside her mom and watch. The time she thought about was when her mom was making a clown. Filly loved the clown and watched it’s progress diligently, every day checking on her mom. Her mom would ask Filly if she liked this fabric or that fabric better and Filly would answer. Though her mom told Filly that the clown was being made for her cousin Bond, Filly was convinced her mom was secretly going to give the clown to her. She loved it so much.

But she was wrong. The clown was in fact a gift for her cousin. That was when she learned that her mom was making her a Pinocchio doll next. And the funny thing was, Filly’s dad ALSO gave her a Pinocchio doll as well. Was there some secret message in their choice for her growing up lol… a character that would not tell the truth so the nose kept growing.

Filly had, when she was in Colorado, met with a counselor in order to confirm what her core values were, and she had determined that Truth was in fact her number one core value. So Pinocchio, her little wooden friend, had a place in her thinking. Truth was paramount. The Pinocchio doll her mom had made, unfortunately had not survived because it had been made of felt, which the moths ate. But Filly could remember the doll, which she had grown to love as much as the clown, and had kept it on her bed all her growing up years. The wooden Pinocchio that her dad had given her, was still in one piece, and his arms and legs had been glued back on when they fell off after many years.

Filly had made some terrible mistakes in her lifetime. She had made herself tell the truth however, taking ownership of her mistakes and not allowing herself to make excuses for her behavior. She thought about how Pinocchio was made out of the very wood from a tree in the forest that he wandered about it, when he was not listening to good. Pinocchio had not been able to see the forest for the trees.

Filly thought about the poem by Robert Frost about the horses in the woods on a snowy evening. “Whose woods are these I think I know his house is in the village though”

The woods Filly believed were synonymous with darkness, losing the way, evil. Mankind, knowing that evil exists, chooses to keep it distant. The house, in the village, has life, light and truth. Pinocchio left his home in the village, and allowed himself to be distorted by the lures of evil. To the point where he was almost not recognizable.

Filly thought that she had done her share of listening to the promises of evil. Promises that do not lead to happiness or satisfaction. Promises that do not come from truth. Filly thought that it was cool, how Disney had created Jimmny Cricket, to stand on Pinocchio’s shoulder and remind him of who he really was…someone good, not listening to evil suggestions. Filly’s sister had just called her on the phone, and Filly could hear loudly “crickets” in the background, just like Jimmny Cricket. Good has a voice, and it is loud and recognizable, and not silent.

Filly thought of the good happening in the world… lots of good, coming from lots of people. Those who would listen to evil, were as obvious as the braying of donkeys. And their voices were no longer able to trick or deceive people. Even when these evil or destructive voices had been magnified in the media, in an attempt to give them more weight or power…they had not succeeded.

Her randomly chosen bible verse was “love God with all your heart and soul as this is the first commandment”. Loving God meant loving good, expecting good, and turning all thoughts toward good…something constantly happening and uplifting.
Pinocchio did not dwell in the forest. When Filly knew that she was going to get harassed by the voices of evil or big media, all she heard was “crickets”.