You’d think the life of a garden gnome is fairly straightforward, but I’m here to tell you it’s not. What you see is plain enough–a bright little statue quaintly situated in amongst the shady hedges or tucked in amongst the pansies, mint and myrtle, come rain or come shine, offering a dash of whimsy to an otherwise staid garden. What could be difficult about that, you may well ask.

What you don’t see–the things that go on by the light of the moon–are the bits that aren’t so straightforward.  It is a little known fact that garden gnomes are lunarly sensitive.  Not lunatics in the strictest sense of the word, but nearly so.  You see, the fuller the moon, the more enlivened garden gnomes become…

Once upon a time, Gnomes were royal sentries, the ancient equivalent of the Secret Service, offering loyal protection to kings and princes. A king with an entourage of Gnomes was an awesome sight and a force with which to be reckoned. No one could gain advantage while the Gnomes were on guard. They were immortal, sleepless creatures, ever vigilant, with keen eyesight, sharp minds, and a unique sixth sense that is hard to quantify, since humans have nothing like it.

 This peculiar Gnomish sense is called gnosis, from their word “to gno,” which means something like perceive, except that Gnomes have a physiological response to gnoing. When humans taste, their tongues are operational; when Gnomes gno, the hairs on their toes are operational. Similar to the manner in which animals sense threats, Gnomes gno when danger is lurking. They can sense malevolence, because its presence makes their toes tingle, and the tingling jostles them to swift, decisive action, even before their conscious mind has devised a plan.

As you can imagine, tingling toes in the presence of danger or evil is a very valuable skill. Kings and high ranking officials, both of whom tend to have lots of enemies and rivals, value this sense. In the days of kings and princes, Gnomes were highly sought after as royal sentries, with clans of Gnomes loyally serving dynasties for generations. It was a mutually agreeable situation: the kings were well protected and the Gnomes were highly esteemed and richly rewarded for their service.

And so it went throughout the centuries…until two particularly wicked wizards plotted to overthrow several kingdoms. Between the two of them, they devised a plan to render the kings and lords vulnerable so that the wizards and their hairy hordes could seize control and plunder their treasuries. The stroke of brilliance in their plan involved disabling the regiments of Gnomes with a dastardly spell. Gnomeless, the kings and lords would be helpless and easily conquered. With the kingdoms under their control, the two wizards could seize power and leave the kingdoms penniless.

For several years the two wicked wizards worked ceaselessly, perfecting their potions and practising their casting. When finally everything was ready, they picked a moonless summer night when the mightiest kings and lords of the continent were convening. Disguised as two world famous minstrels, the wicked wizards made an appeal to perform before the gathered royalty. The kings, weary from the mundane business of peacekeeping and arranging of alliance-enhancing marriages, were thrilled to enjoy some frivolity.

At once the Gnome Sentries toes were set a-tingle. However, the two wizards pretended with great effect to be bickering with one another, full of the jealous cattiness and histrionic spite of overly dramatic types, so the Gnomes would assume the malevolence they gnew was strictly between the two troubadours, rather than a threat to the convention of kings and lords.

Slightly uneasy, the Gnomes allowed the ostensibly famous minstrels to perform. It took all their Gnomish inner might to disregard the tingling of their toes. The two performers took up their instruments before an audience eagerly anticipating lively entertainment of songs and tales. Just as their first song ended, the wicked wizards suddenly cast their horrible spell, turning everyone in the room into stone–Gnomes included. The wizards, disguises discarded, quickly seized power, made loathsome decrees, and despoiled the kingdoms of all lucre. All of their plundering was exacted quickly, before the moon began to wax again.

When the sun arose the following morning, its early glow fell across the cold stony statues of men and Gnomes. The mortal hearts of kings and princes never quickened again; they lay where they fell, like alabaster statues toppled by marauding raiders. The immortal Gnomes, on the other hand, were destined by the spell to an endless cycle of petrifaction and resuscitation.

The bewildered citizens, seeing their fallen kings, panicked, quickly bundling up their families and meagre possessions and fleeing to far away lands in search of safety and peace. The wicked wizards cursed them as they fled, all the while figuring the absence of the citizens meant more land and goods for them and their hairy accomplices.

As the sun set that day and the sliver of moon rose in the summer sky, slowly the spell lost some of its grip. The petrified Gnomes could move their eyes, but that was all. Gazing about, they saw their ruined posts and wept cold tears down their cheeks of stone. With the rising of the sun, the Gnomes eyes hardened over. In their flinty daylight state, though they could not gno, they could think and dream and lament.

The next evening, the Gnomes found they could move their eyes and their lips, and so they cried and raged until they could make no sound at all. When the sun rose, again they turned to solid stone.

The next evening and the next, more and more of their bodies were released until finally when the moon was full, the Gnomes found they had complete mobility. Their sense of gnosis even quickened when their feet were freed from the cold stone. They hugged one another as they wept for the kings they loved so. Hastened by the foreboding they all gnew from the despotic rule of evil in that land, they quickly buried the fallen kings and princes in one nearby tomb, sealing its great door as the first morning rays fell on their backs. That day the sun rose and fell on a frozen crowd of sad-faced stone Gnomes, pushing against the tomb door.

As the moon waned each night that month, they lost their freedom little by little until finally with only a sliver in the late summer night sky, their mobility was restricted again to only their eyes. And so it has gone through the ages, the once mighty Gnomes gradually petrifying and reviving, re-petrifying and re-reviving, in sync with the moon and the tides.

Ever since those days of old, with each full moon, when maximum mobility and full gnosis is restored, the Gnomes have endeavoured to break the wicked spell. Their progress through the centuries has been excruciatingly slow, since they have only been mobile when the moon is full; however, Gnomish lore has it that within a matter of months from now, the Gnomes will have succeeded in breaking the spell, freeing them forever from the ancient magic and its associated lunar sensitivity. The Gnomes, released from their shackles of stone, will finally be free to rise from beneath the garden hedges and depart from patches of pansies, mint and myrtle and return to their rightful posts as Royal Sentries, or perhaps the Secret Service.

“Mother, this is Esther. She’s my daughter and she’s 8.”
“What a lovely child. Esther–that’s my name too.”
“That’s right. We named her after you.”
“After me? How lovely.” Esther the elder, my grandmother, sipped her tea, her cup softly rattling against the saucer in her shaky grip. She looked at us with an impish smile.
“And who is this lovely child, June?” Grandma asked my mother, pointing her gnarled finger at me.
“That’s Esther, my daughter. She’s 8,” mum said, without a trace of impatience.
“Esther–that’s my name,” she replied with pleasure. She smiled at me again.

I smiled at her, then sighed. Grandma was tiny and bent with papery, spotted skin and kind, watery eyes nestled deep in her wrinkled face. On our visits to the nursing home, we rarely got beyond my name and the endless intrigue it seemed to cause when she realised we both had the same name. I knew she would have this revelation another dozen times before we said our good-byes.

About a decade earlier, she’d suffered a massive stroke that wiped out her memory. Ever since, she has not been able to store new information or retrieve most of her memories. The present was fleeting to her, like water spiraling down a drain. The past was murky and evasive. She rarely finished sentences because she’d forget what she had intended to say. To most people, this was exasperating, but I did not have any expectations of how she should be, since I’d only known her this way: an old woman who was endlessly fascinated with my name.

“Get Grandma another biscuit, Sweetie,” mum prompted. She knew an 8-year-old would get fidgety quickly. I took my cue and darted over to the trolley that served the elderly residents their afternoon tea. I picked out an orange cream biscuit for me and a gingersnap for her, because I knew Grandma liked them best.

“Here you go, Grandma. A gingersnap, your favourite,” I said as I handed her the biscuit.
“Thank you, dear.” Then, looking at my mother, ” Who’s this sweet little thing?”
“That’s Esther, my daughter. She’s eight,” Mum said, on autopilot.
“Isn’t she precious? And we have the same name.” Smiling again.

A nurse walked over and bent down to my grandmother’s eye level. “Esther, would you like to play the piano for us?”
“The piano? Do you have a piano in this place?” She looked around incredulously.

After the crocheted lap blankets were removed, Esther the elder was gently hoisted up out of her recliner and led to the piano. Her slippered feet shuffled slowly across the linoleum floor, making a shoosh-shoosh sound. “Shoosh! Shoosh!,” Eunice, a spritely dementia patient, echoed the noise of the slippers and waved her hands ecstatically. Her dentures shifted in her jowls and she called out in her croaky voice, “Play us a tune Esther, something saucy!”

Grandma smiled benevolently at Eunice as she sat on the piano bench. Her shaky fingers settled on the keys and she cleared her throat. The chatter in the residents’ lounge died down, as if a conductor had raised his baton. Even the loquacious Eunice quieted, though her hands still waved about like an itchy octopus. I leaned up against my mother and dared not breathe as we waited for the magic to happen.

Esther the elder ran her fingers nimbly up the keys. “This was Earl’s favourite song,” she said to her audience, like a seasoned performer. And she began to play a beautiful melody, “September Song.” Earl was my grandfather. He had died in September two-years before Grandma’s stroke. The song was dramatic, swelling and fading. Esther was immersed in the music, lost in the moment, yet very much alive and well. Even I, a child of eight, could sense her love and longing for Earl and discern her discouragement with her present predicament. With every fibre of my being, I sat engaged in the music, finally able to know and understand Grandma Esther and hear her heart.

At the keyboard Grandma transformed from a bent and fragile woman with no memory of the past nor ability to engage with the present into a vibrant musician. She played complex pieces of many genres, segueing seamlessly from one beautiful piece to another. More miraculously, she could converse while playing. She could finish sentences. She could make connections and store information. It was as if contact with the keys were some sort of magical conduit to sanity, to memory, to functionality.

My mum would sit and listen to her mother’s music, tapping her foot, smiling and transported by Grandma’s melodies to another happier time. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye, I’d glimpse a quiver of lips and a solitary tear run down Mum’s cheek… while Grandma played the piano.

When the songs came to an end and the meagre applause of the aged died down, Esther slowly stood up, puffed from the exertion. Her spirit instantly retreated and her memory disintegrated. The disengaged, ravaged shell of my grandmother was all that remained.

We’d hug her gently as we made our way out and she’d pat my hand and say, “Who is this?”

I remember treasure hunting in my grandparents’ attic. Shrugging off the creepy feeling the place evoked, I would climb the creaking stairs, dodging empty buckets and hardened string mops and stepping over stacks of yellowed sheet music, to reach that curious upper room.

It had a totally different atmosphere to the rest of the house–either hotter than the rest of the house or colder, depending on the season. The stale air smelled spicy sweet, a musty bouquet of cedar and dust. Regardless of what time of year it was, a veil of dust shrouded the offcast furnishings and old luggage. An army of dead bug carcasses littered the window sills at either end of the room, like POW’s left to rot in murky prisons. The dim light, dark eerie corners and low, sloping ceiling induced vague claustrophobic sensations in the pit of my stomach, which strangely added to the excitement.

In my short childhood, I’d made a couple of treks up to that mysterious shadowy retreat and each time I unearthed something delightful. Once I discovered Mom’s wedding dress encased in a white plastic garment bag. I was entranced. What on earth was a beautiful white gown doing in this dusty place? And more to the point–why hadn’t I been granted playing privileges with this gown? I begged for Mom to let me take it home and try it on. And when I got it home I paraded around in it, veil and all. There are some pictures of me standing in front of the mirror in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, my little pink pyjamas peeking through at the shoulder.

On another attic expedition I discovered a box with curious scrawl on the lid. My mother told me it said: “For Alison” in Gram’s handwriting. I (Alison) had discovered little girl’s equivalent of the Mother Lode. Sometime before she died, she had packed up her cut crystal for me. There was a sugar bowl and creamer and a pedestal candy bowl with a dome lid. The bowl and the lid both had a zigzag edge, like shark teeth, that fit together. None of it was my mother’s taste–she said it was “atrocious” or some other negative word. I liked it simply because I’d found it in the attic with MY name on it.

One time I found a small green suitcase with a pair of pointy pink silk covered stilettos tucked inside, another great find. They were so different to the chunky, square-toed shoes of the seventies. These were so elegant, so refined, like the ones Doris Day wore in the old movies. I tromped around in those shoes for the rest of the day. Finding them reminded me of the tin of costume jewelry in Gram’s bedroom closet. I always loved playing with those things, even though the tin smelled odd, salty and pungent, like unwashed seashells. The tangle of necklaces and clip on earrings revealed shells and seeds, baubles and beads. One special silver chain held a small glass ball which housed a mustard seed. I always asked if I could keep the things I found. Usually Mom said no, probably not wanting the mess in her house (something I completely understand now, but thought was so unfair back then.) She let me keep the suitcase. She told me it was called a “train case,” for a lady’s make-up and toiletries when she travelled. I had that train case for years.

Someone would always warn me about wasps or the filth up in the attic, but I paid no heed. Wasps or no wasps, attics were, in my mind, wonderful places, brimming with curios and laden with treasures just waiting to be discovered. Poppy’s attic was slightly creepy too, which heightened the thrill. What about that spooky closet in the corner…what was behind the door? I’d get dizzy just glancing at its menacing doorknob.