Some kind of fairytale: Part II

(To read Part I, click here.)

After her year with Princess, Mandy felt a need to move on and out of her job. She decided that after the hard time she had always given her father, it was only fair that she give his homeland a try. After recharging her social batteries by spending a month back in the land of Oz with all her family and friends, Mandy made the 20+ hour journey to the United Kingdom. It may have been a kingdom, but there were no princesses there. Only one very spoilt 12 year old Prince, whom Mandy catered for for a few months before escaping to London Town. There she spent the rest of the year doing a job that took no energy or intelligence, but making wonderful friends. This was her much missed college experience, and she shared it with some great roommates. But overall, her father’s homeland was cold, wet and gloomy. And Mandy decided that she could never feel at home in a place that allowed 16 year old children to smoke cigarettes.

Mandy travelled back to Oz, via Princess’s house for a month long Cali-Land summer visit. She participated in a wedding (not hers) and underwent a frustrating search for a ‘normal’ job. She eventually gave up on that search, and landed another childcare job. This job evolved into something Mandy had never expected and something that was both immensely challenging and truly rewarding. She took care of children whose parents were incapable of doing so. She learnt how take care of little people with huge, often uncontrollable emotions. She learnt how to supervise play and homework, cook and clean, role model and discipline. In short, she learnt how to be a part-time parent. Mandy worked hard, recording 120 hours of work one week, and over 70 hours many others. Dreaming, saving, and planning her return to her mother’s homeland. The faraway land that she had come to truly think of as home.

Despite the ugly, scrunched faces that the people of Oz gave her when she would announce her intended destination, 20 months after landing back in Oz, Mandy left it again. She still cried when she kissed her cats goodbye, but she left with the conviction that she was going to make this work and that she was headed to the place where she would live for a very long time to come. Now Mandy lives in the City of Angels, though she hopes to one day soon live adjacent to the City of Angels. After some more short travels, indecisions and false starts, she is now focused on winning a decent paying job providing the luxury of nanny service to the people of L.A. Until then she fills her days with a balance of the reality of job searching and the escape of music, movies, and television.

Some days Mandy feels down, not having a job to get up for in the morning or friends to meet up with in the evening. She misses the good people of Oz and her friends in the Kingdom. She struggles with the fakeness and flakiness of so many of the Angelic people who have fluttered past her. She hopes to eventually add some more people to the number of local friendlies she can count on one hand. But she reminds herself that she is indeed living her dream, though it is still a work in progress. And when that doesn’t work, she surrounds herself with the love and childlike optimism of Princess and the support of Princess’s family. She still smiles when people ask her where she’s from, or compliment her accent, as she is proud to have come from the land of Oz. But she frowns when the Angelic people assume that she is not an American and does not live here. Because, you see, she always has been and she finally does live here in this faraway land, where she is finding the way to her happily ever after.

The End.

Some kind of fairytale: Part I

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Mandy. She lived in the marvellous land of Oz with her mother, her father, her brother, and her cats. She was close to her father’s family, who had all lived in her hometown since her grandparents arrived on the ship from England with Mandy’s 3 year old father. She visited her mother’s family in a faraway land called U.S.A every 3 to 6 years. The people in that land spoke differently, like her mother. Young Mandy’s voice changed often, day by day sounding like she was from a different land – her mother’s, her father’s, or her own. She would proudly tell anyone who would listen that she was an American. Mandy’s school teachers would always hand back her schoolwork with circles around words such as “color” and “organized” and she would be told that the correct spelling was “colour” and “organised”. This made Mandy determined not to correct her spelling, defiantly certain that different did not mean incorrect. One day, while on holiday with her family, Mandy got into an argument with her father when she called their boat Dynasty and he corrected her, insisting it was pronounced DINasty. Mandy used to defend her mother when she was playfully teased for the way she spoke. When her mother one day decided to stop saying “ant” and start saying “aunt” because it just made everything easier, it made Mandy sad. She continues up until this day to argue with her father over pronunciation of “Dymocks’, a book store.

You see, Mandy thought her mother’s faraway homeland was so much more exciting than Oz. She planned to live there one day and resented the fact that she hadn’t been raised there. Mandy wanted to do the wonderful things that the kids in books and on television did in her mother’s land. She wanted to go to the mystical place called Elementary School and be served food in a cafeteria on a tray with a carton of milk. Mandy dreamed of going to summer camp and graduating not only from Elementary School but also from Junior High, where there would be a hallway lined with lockers, students who got to wear their own clothes, and another cafeteria filled with tables to sit at with her friends and her carton of milk. She wanted to be a high school cheerleader, or at least attend pep rallies in between classes called ‘Algebra’ or ‘Calculus’. She wanted a High School graduation with caps and gowns. Mandy dreamed of what it would be like to go away to college and live in a dorm room with a roommate. Oh yes, in Mandy’s eyes life would have been so much more exciting in that faraway land. But Mandy lived in Oz, so she wore a school uniform, sat through “Maths”, had “Christmas Holidays” instead of “Summer Vacation”, and attended “University” in her hometown. Yet she still wrote “color” and “center” and smiled when people she met asked her where she was from and told her that they couldn’t place her accent.

So after graduating, Mandy set about making her dreams come true.. albeit a little later than she had wished for. Her mother’s homeland had so many facets that it was difficult for Mandy to decide where she wanted to live out her dream. But, while sorting through job offers from all over the country, Mandy recalled a conversation she’d had with her brother when they were young.
“I’m a New York City boy,” he’d said, “and you’re an L.A girl”.
He was right, and Mandy farewelled her family and friends, kissed her cats goodbye and cried as she left the land of Oz and travelled to sunny California. There she spent a year taking care of a 3 year old Princess. That year was one of the most challenging years of Mandy’s life. She rode as many emotional rollercoasters as she did physical ones. And that was many, considering how fond she was of Six Flags. She made a few friends, lost a few friends, but in the end the year turned out to be all about growing up and learning how to be a better person. For all the good times and the bad, life with her employers changed her. And for all the good times, Princess changed her, forever for the better...

Part II to follow shortly.