The Seaweed on the Pillow, a fairy tale for enlightenment

There once was a tiny sea encroached by a tall green forest filled with bears. A widowed mother lived on the east shore and her grown son on the west. The mother suffered, believing her son’s life was not what it could be.

“You must travel through the forest come winter when bears sleep,” she declared one evening at meal. “There you will find a village and a wife.” She wrung her hands. “If only you’d learned to play the psaltery! Women love men who make music. And why did you never apprentice with the blacksmith?”

The evening continued in this fashion, with the mother citing what the son must do for a goodly life. The son, meanwhile, took to staring at his plate.

“Ah, you are beginning to understand how hard this life is, filled with trials,” the mother said, seeing his grim face. “Do not worry, for I know what you need to do. Go home now and sleep well.”

But come daybreak, a great stone wall divided the tiny sea with the mother on the east shore and the son on the west. As it was summer and bears did roam, it was too dangerous to pass through the forest, so they had no way to visit one another. The seawall reached to the sky and could not be climbed. 

The mother did panic. She got in her boat and rowed to the seawall, where waves splashed most fierce. “Hello?” she called out.

“Mother, where did this seawall come from?” her son answered. For he also had gotten into his boat to see what the seawall was about.

“I told you this world is filled with trial!” she cried out. As if to prove her right, a great tempest arose, and they each rowed with haste back to their shores.

Spring and summer passed with mother and son unable to lay eyes upon one another. For though they used hammer and chisel and unsavory words, the stones of the seawall would not be brought down.

One afternoon the mother looked out her cottage window and received a shock. For a crone did walk upon the sea as would a witch or goddess. Her staff dipped at least six barleycorns into its depths, yet her feet did not sink the least bit.

The mother called greeting. “Have you come to take down the seawall? My son is on the other side all alone. He has no wife or good skills. What will become of him? I have failed him!” And with this, the mother wept sore.

The crone walked upon water to shore and straight past the mother into the cottage. There she poked around in the kitchen, rattling pots and looking inside. “I can help you, but you won’t like it,” she said. 

“I will do anything for my son!”

Finding a potato in a sack, the crone took a goodly bite. “Very well. Tomorrow we will discover the secret of the seawall. We must see what is it good for.”  

That very night the crone gathered seaweed to use as thread and sewed the mother’s mouth shut while she slept. Come morning, the crone did not make confession, but patted the mother’s back over this latest misfortune.

“I will row for you today,” the crone offered.

At the seawall, the son called to his mother. When she never answered, he did speak free and honest, believing himself to be alone. And the mother with her lips sewn shut with seaweed could do nothing but listen.    

That night the mother cried herself to sleep over what she did hear her son say. Come morning she woke to find the crone gone, seaweed on her pillow, and the seawall vanished. With joy she ran to her boat. Mother and son met in the middle of the tiny sea where the wall had once been.

“How did you take down the wall?” he asked, in wonder as he pulled her into his boat and hugged her close.

“I built the seawall, and I took it down. That is all you need to know.” She took his face between her hands and was sore glad to lay her eyes upon him true. No longer did she desire to conjure a vision of him in her mind, as witches might do. She was delighted to see him exactly as he was.

Another wonder happened as they shared fish soup that very night. The son knowingly spoke most free and honest to his mother. And when she listened with closed lips and a smile, he did sprout the most beautiful wings.

Heaven on earth is like this.