“My great-great-grandmother's portrait hung in the university up until the Revolution. By then, the truth of their romance had been reduced to a simple fairy tale. And, while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point, gentlemen, is that they lived. “
We’ve all heard the fairytales, the happily ever afters. As children, we didn’t just believe in them, we thought they were real. As we grew older, the perfect sized glass slippers, the one kiss that cures a hundred years of sleep, the carriage ride with Prince Charming into the sunset gradually dissolves into nothing but a fairytale. As adults, we consider the greatest love stories to be oddly the ones twisted in tragedy: Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Cathy, Odysseus and Penelope, even Jack and Rose, Christian and Satine. Yet, the truth is, even the most cynical of us undeniably want that happily ever after, its form somewhat different to each individual. I don’t think we no longer don’t believe in happily ever afters, but instead, the truth is, we are too afraid to. As children, we were fearless.
A few days ago, as I was walking home, I saw a man climbing up a ladder on the outside of his home, reaching the first floor window, with a paint brush and paint in his hand. As he began to re-paint the outside of his house, a woman appeared on the first floor window, arranging a bouquet of flowers on the windowsill, while a little girl was in the front garden, picking more flowers in a shade of bright purple. To my surprise, the husband extended a hand out towards the wife, and began to sing a nonsensical form of opera, jokingly adding ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’. It was in that moment, as the husband ended the serenade on a painfully out of tune note, as the wife laughed and the daughter giggled, and as the sun projected a magnificent golden colour on their half-painted house on a quiet, suburban road, the gentle summer evening breeze causing the wind chime to playfully dance and tinker, that I realised this was the true definition of a fairytale. That forgoing unrealistic expectations lost in the world of Walter Elias Disney, or star-crossed lovers and tragic love stories, in reality, this was, in essence, everything that anyone could ever wish for.