Carl Jung and the restless cherub
Some years ago, after my grandmother passed, my mother and I began the task of sorting through her things. The sadness of the occasion was made easier by the humor we found in discovering several of Grandma’s small secrets. That she hoarded Sweet’N Low packages inside each of her many purses. (That she owned so many purses!) That she had devoted an entire drawer to what seemed to be an entire lifetime’s worth of pantyhose. That underneath her king-sized bed were more shoe boxes than she had shoes, each filled with what may have been every single card and letter she had received since she married. This discovery in turn led to hours of reading family stories, gossip, and, the best secret, love letters written by my grandfather and sent to her during WW2 while he was stationed in India.
As we packed up to leave I took several of Grandma’s things. Old photos showcasing her in different stages of her life. A couple of pieces of costume jewelry that I liked remembering her wearing. A small statue of a horse my Granddad carved from a cypress tree knee. And a small cherub figurine attached to a magnifying glass. It didn’t really hold a sentimental attachment to my grandmother’s memory and I’m not really sure why I took it. She had set it on her dresser along with bottles of perfume, a jewelry box and, like so many women of her generation, talcum powder held inside a round decorative container (the one with that huge powder puff inside). It had probably been a gift and she’d placed it there because what else was one to do with a cherub figurine attached to a magnifying glass?
But here’s the thing. I stored it in a jewelry box of my own and pretty much forgot about it until years later when I was moving into a new apartment in Austin and came across it. This time it was me who set it on top of a chest of drawers along with various other little statues, a basket of bracelets, an earring tree, quite a few things really. And it wasn’t long before I began to notice that the cherub would move every time I left the apartment. I mean, I’d come back into my bedroom and find the cherub had turned away from where it had been facing when I left. It began to feel almost like a game the two of us were playing. I’d make a point of studying it before I turned out the light and left the room, and I’d come back hours later to study it again, and confirm its movement. I’d turn it back to where it had been, and the next day we’d go through our routine again. I know what you’re thinking. Perhaps I bumped the dresser without realizing it. Or closed a drawer with more force than I realized. There must be an explanation, although I really struggle to reconcile why nothing else on that piece of furniture ever moves. Ever. But I am sure someone, somewhere has the answer. Perhaps.
I am not known as a ghost hunter or one who conducts seances. I was the teenage-aged girl secretly pushing the planchette when playing with the Ouija board only to give myself away by laughing out loud as a dirty joke or preposterous answer was revealed. But it is also true that I believe there are things in this world that cannot be proven through scientific analytical lenses. And so I wonder about this little statuette that doesn’t want to stand still.
I wonder about a lot of things that can’t so easily be explained. Even though I do not fully understand it myself, I am now one who calls out to my muse before sitting down to write. In a world far removed from Zeus’ mythological daughters you may be surprised to learn that many modern-day writers do this. I cannot speak for others, but I believe we all share a belief that creativity is something that moves to and through us, rather than simply from us. That we are tapping into something far bigger than ourselves. And I am not alone in having experienced that exciting if also rather nerve-wracking sensation when words (or music or images) are suddenly all around me bubbling forth from some creative ether. These are the times when I find myself frantically scribbling sentences, trying to commit them to paper, as more words, thoughts, sentences keep coming. Yes, the unexplainable muse.
But recently it has been suggested to me that perhaps one’s muse is actually the voice of one’s ancestors.
Carl Jung was fascinated by the idea that our ancestors might play a larger role in our lives than we realize. In “Memories, Dream & Reflections” he wrote, “I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors... It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.” I do not claim to be a Jungian scholar, but those words resonate with me.
I kept a journal, as I do during all my travels, while on the African continent. The idea of writing a book certainly appealed to me, especially as the journals piled up, and when I returned to the States I immediately began working on it. I went through periods where I wrote fervently, almost religiously. But those days were always followed by even longer periods of writing hardly at all. Years went by and the book, although amassing a rather ridiculous number of pages, remained a work in progress, eventually becoming almost an abstract endeavor.
My father had also written a book. His was a collection of memories and stories from his life as a newspaperman. I have the rough draft, typed out on an old-school metal typewriter with my dad’s signature red pencil edits scribbled in the margins. The only copy. It was never published. He never revised it nor produced a second draft.
Like so many teenaged girls I had a difficult relationship with my dad. Self-conscious and self-centered, I couldn’t reconcile this seemingly impatient, authoritarian father with the devoted, doting daddy of my girlhood. I spent years angry and resentful, focusing on how different we were from each other and how he didn’t seem to understand me at all. I had to grow up quite a bit before it dawned on me that perhaps I didn’t really understand him either.
My father and I, thankfully, were able to create a good relationship in his older days and I would say he was my friend those final years. And I allowed myself to see things about him that made him relatable to me. That he traveled solo in Europe after his service in the Korean Conflict. That he loved laughing loud enough and long enough to embarrass those around him. That he absolutely relished a good story. After he passed I finished my book.
Someone who knows me better than I care to admit told me quite confidently that I couldn’t finish my memoir until after my father, who never finished his, had passed. I was incredulous when he first said this to me, but after some time it just felt true. The writing had come easily after the initial sadness of losing dad had faded and I found myself editing and formatting and finally publishing my book. It all fell into place. Did the spirit of my dad, whose book was left unfinished, help guide me to finish mine?
And is that what one’s muse actually is? The inspiration which stirs within you and then compels you to complete an ancestor’s unfinished task? Maybe it’s not even important to know the exact stories that need to be completed. Maybe it’s more important to see and hear the signs and signals that appear throughout our lives, and to realize they will guide us to opportunities to grow and learn and change. Maybe those are the voices of the ancestors.
Is my grandmother’s spirit somehow tied to the little cherub? Is she trying to make me consider my life in a different way? Is she telling me to look more closely, to focus and stop missing what might be right in front of me? The cherub is holding a magnifying glass after all.
If I am honest I will admit that, like most grandchildren young or old, my knowledge of my grandparents mostly consists of their lives after I was born. But of course she had a whole other life completely separate from being a grandmother or even a wife. I’m glad I took the old photos. I can look into her eyes when she was a girl, a teenager, a young bride and know she had unfulfilled dreams and wishes, but accomplishments too, and delights and secrets that were hers alone. Is there an unfinished task I can complete for her? And if I change direction, begin to walk on a path she once traveled, maybe she in turn will lead me to unchartered discoveries, perhaps not so easy to explain, both mine and hers.