My grandmother used to tell me a fairy story when she put me to bed. In it, a group of sisters lived all alone together on an island in the sea. There were seven of them, I think, and they each had their own little hut and their own little garden and their own little boat down by the sea.<\/p>\n
And the youngest sister, who was much younger than her siblings, and who I always imagined as being the same age as me – as I was then, not as I am now – she went to stay with her oldest sister, who had been on the island the longest, and who had the longest hair, and who had the tallest flowers in her garden (but not necessarily the brightest).<\/p>\n
And as this sister was tucking her into bed that night, the young girl looked up at her sister and said to her, \u201cWhy, dear sister, do you have your boat on the beach, yet never use it to sail out to sea in search of something better?\u201d <\/p>\n
And the old sister said, \u201cHope,\u201d and the little sister said, \u201cThat\u2019s not an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, if you don\u2019t like my answer,\u201d her sister said, \u201cGo and ask our next sister tomorrow, and see if you like what she says any better.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then she tucked the young girl into bed, kissed her on the head, and said, \u201cGoodnight\u201d.<\/p>\n
So the next day, the youngest sister went to stay at the next sister\u2019s house, and that evening, as she was being put to bed, the girl asked the same question, and her sister gave the same answer, just that one word, \u201cHope\u201d. <\/p>\n
And then she tucked the young girl into bed, kissed her on the head, and said, \u201cGoodnight\u201d.<\/p>\n
The young girl didn\u2019t like that, and she didn\u2019t it like when all her other sisters said the same.<\/p>\n
Finally she spoke to her youngest sister (the second youngest of the seven). While all her other sisters seemed like they were older than the stars and older than the sky and older even than the sea itself, this sister seemed almost as young as herself. <\/p>\n
And she said, \u201cHope\u201d just like all the others.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s not an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, if you don\u2019t like my answer,\u201d her sister said. \u201cYou\u2019ll have to ask yourself why you don\u2019t use your boat and sail yourself off to sea in search of something better.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that was the end of the story. <\/p>\n
Sometimes I would ask my grandmother, \u201cso why didn\u2019t they use the boat,\u201d and of course she would say, \u201cHope,\u201d with a smile, and tuck me into bed and say goodnight.<\/p>\n
Once I said, \u201cWhat is hope?\u201d and my grandmother said, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d And once I said, \u201cDo you think the boat was hope?\u201d meaning, I think, that you can\u2019t use hope, that you have to leave it where it is. That hope is potential, and once you use it it\u2019s gone. Although of course I didn\u2019t have the words to say that then. I don\u2019t really have the words to say it now. <\/p>\n
And my grandmother said, \u201cWhat if it wasn\u2019t the boat, but the island. The island and the sea and the sky and the whole wide world.\u201d<\/p>\n
And I said, \u201cI think in the story it was the sisters who were hope,\u201d and my grandmother said, \u201cOr one of them at least,\u201d and she tucked my into bed and kissed me on the forehead and wished me goodnight.<\/p>\n
Some nights I dreamt the youngest sister spent the rest of the summer building a new hut, planting a new garden, building a new boat and taking it down to the seaside and waiting, waiting, waiting for a new sister of her own.<\/p>\n
But other nights I dreamt of her climbing into her boat and sailing away across the sea. And where she went, what she saw, what she did, now that<\/em> I will not say.<\/p>\n__________<\/br> My grandmother used to tell me a fairy story when she put me to bed. In it, a group of sisters lived all alone together on an island in the sea. There were seven of them, I think, and they each had their own little hut and their own little garden and their own little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20,21,303,32],"class_list":["post-2374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-thousand-and-one-tales","tag-a-thousand-and-one-tales","tag-fairy-tales","tag-hope","tag-sisters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2375,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2374\/revisions\/2375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"