The Golden Crown
I was folding the laundry, and I could hear my Dad scolding my Mom in the next room.
“Those health care workers are for me! They’re not supposed to be ironing, or vacuuming, or helping you, they are supposed to be helping ME!”
She had just finished asking him for a check, so I could take her out to buy a couple new pair of pants. Back in the house now, he is busy retaking lost territory and asserting who’s the boss.
In the car, she weeps.
“What am I going to do?” she asks me.
Inspiration strikes.
“Mom, remember the golden crown you wore at the rehersal dinner, the night before the wedding? I saw it on the top shelf of the linen closet when I was putting things away.”
She looks at me like I am out of my mind.
“Mom, when he talks to you that way, don’t talk back. Just go get the crown and put it on. Don’t say anything, just wear the crown.”
She starts to giggle. Good. Got her laughing.
“Why would I wear a crown?” she demands.
“Because it will drive Dad crazy. Eventually, he will have to ask you why you are wearing the crown, and you can just tell him it reminds you of a time when you were treated with respect, and you were happy.”
At this point, we both dissolve in giggles. I don’t think she will ever put the crown on – she has her own ways of dealing with Dad. But at least she remembers that things have not always been this way, and she can hold her head high.
My husband reminds me that one day, we too will be facing the challenges of being, we hope, very old. He says we will probably be nasty and angry, too at losing control over our lives, at losing independance. Having that kind of input is one of the benefits of having been married to the same person for a long time. Hope someone gives me a golden crown.
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Here There and Everywhere 
a bit, on a different type of golden crown, from Jacqueline Osherow, “The Hoopoe’s Crown”:
My loving family
has been — a bit too much — my golden crown
and it was spectacular, if only briefly.
No feathers to replace it, only pain,
which I, like an idiot, thought poetry
might be able to help me undermine.
No luck. But I have learned something;
it’s a bankrupt business, ornamentation,
idolatrous, at worst; at best, an aching
absence of whatever it is that matters.
A little wisdom is a relentless thing;
everywhere I look, something shatters.
And as for that protective flock of stunning birds,
I don’t envy Solomon when it scatters.
The hoopoe appears both in the Old Testament and in the life of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as in the beautiful Conference of the Birds.
he is mad, with those dreams and these moods – like Swift, dying from the top down. poor Grandma.
love petite a.
Wow, Little Diamond – “it’s a bankrupt business, ornamentation, . . .an aching
absence of whatever it is that matters.” I love it. How did you find that?
oh ya khalti, I just googled it, as I do everything. I typed “golden crown” poetry and hoped for the best. the hoopoe/King Solomon connection was pure, and very welcome, serendipity.
what I have not been able to find is anything on the NPR program you mentioned. nothing on the NPR site, nothing on your local station’s site, searching ‘ramadan’, ‘tash ma tash’, ‘Saudi Arabia’, or any combination thereof. so frustrating for someone so accustomed to having the online world at her fingertips!
I found it – called Ramadan TV Report, under World (it’s when I was driving “home”.) It’s 8:20 long, and you can listen to it at this address:
http://www.theworld.org/?q=taxonomy_by_date/1/20061017
Life is a challenge at every stage it seems!