I wrote a poem. Like, with line breaks. And this fantastic journal, Mothers Always Write, published it. If you parent, this is definitely a journal to know about.

The Rapunzel story has always fascinated me because the mother’s craving is what gets the trouble going, but then the mother drops out of the story entirely, replaced by the witch/ogress and the prince who, of course, finally saves Rapunzel from the tower. In Western culture, most versions share this quality, even when the details differ. So what is the lesson here? Don’t live next door to ogresses with green thumbs? Don’t give in to cravings, even for something as mild as veggies and salad greens? I suppose the real lesson doesn’t pertain to the mother at all, but I’m fixated on her loss, returning to where the fairy tale leaves her.

Here’s a photo of one mother-to-be’s consumption of rapunzel. She’s going to lose her baby over this, but the line on this page is “His wife was content that night.”