I Met a Little Elf Man Once

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The Elf Man

I met a little elf man once, down where the lilies blow.

I asked him why he was so small and why he didn’t grow.

He slightly frowned and with his eye He looked me through and through.

“I’m quite as big for me”, said he, “as you are big for you.”

                                                                                                                                                                            –John Kendrick Bangs (1862–)

Meet O’Malley. He is neither an elf nor a man. He’s a little stone statue and he has been with me for a while. Like all of us, O’Malley has a story. Many years ago when my husband, son and I lived at Manos Meadows, I had another small stone statuary, a woodcutter. Well, one day this little sprite  just disappeared. I don’t know where he went nor how. Maybe he got lonely for his kin and took off for Ireland. Who knows? But my neighbor who lived across the street found another statuary that sort of resembled the woodcutter so I ordered him from a catalog and one day, he arrived. Such a happy, busy fellow, always cheerful deserved a good Irish name. So, somebody in the family came up with O’Malley and the name stuck. He is not a woodcutter, he pushes a wheelbarrow. He has never volunteered any information about himself or what he’s doing with that wheelbarrow.  But  whatever it is, he is doing just what he was intended to do, taking up space among the flowers in my birthday garden.

That short poem by John Kendrick Bangs teaches a lesson in rhyme form. We are each different, just like the flowers in the garden. We should not want to look, talk, act, or think like anyone except the person which God made us to be. Some of us are short, some are tall; some are dark, some are fair. Some excel in math like a certain little girl and boy I could name. Some of us don’t, like their grandma (me). We need to accept and respect each other, be glad that we are not all the same (what a dull world that would be. Can you imagine a world of roses with no daisies or tulips?) And we need to accept and respect ourselves. After all, if God had wanted us all to be the same, he could  have cut us out of the dirt with a cookie cutter.

O’Malley