My Mom: A Cinderella Story

Also... why she may have named me "Cyndera"

It all started with the missing Christmas tree ornaments. After almost two decades of moving, marriages come and gone, including the death of my father, the childhood ornaments had disappeared. There had been an ornament for each person of our family, hung on our artificial tree in those winter nights full of lights and Mannheim Steamroller. My heart was profoundly saddened each time I decorated the new tree each year. There were lovely, sparkly ornaments for new happy memories in my current family, but that distant past and now disparate family members were unrepresented. 

The solution came one morning while speaking with my mom, now in her 70’s, on the telephone. Our busy lives had left us out of touch on a regular basis, so we had agreed on these weekly phone dates. After finally sharing this long-held sadness about the ornaments, it occurred to me that this problem had a solution. The old ornaments may never be found, but new ones could be specially chosen. The whole family could again be represented on the tree! There would be a Navy Star for my eldest brother, The Little Drummer Boy for my middle brother and a Nativity scene for my father (in which the father Joseph had the most loving, bearded face just like my dad’s). 

“I have a request for what I’d like my ornament to be!” said my mother, excitedly. I pricked up my ears, my mother so seldomly asking for anything: “Can my ornament be of Cinderella?” 

This simple request got us talking about how much the story of Cinderella meant to her throughout her life. This led to another idea. I asked: “Hey Mom, what would you think about sharing your childhood story with me, through the lens of the fairy tale Cinderella?” With audible tears of happiness, my mother agreed. 

The following essay will reference two versions of the tale: Walt Disney’s Cinderella, a Little Golden Book version of 1950. This version was the one my mother received in a pivotal period in her childhood, as you will see. This essay will also reference one of the most well-known French versions written by Charles Perault in 1697 and shapes our modern versions of Cinderella. The story of Cinderella itself goes back as far as ancient Greece, with the story of Egyptian Rhodopes and the Pharaoh. There are also variations seen throughout the world in just about every culture. 

It is with immense love that I present pieces of the Cinderella story here, interwoven with biographical elements of my mother’s story. She will be referred to as “Joni” and sometimes as “my mother” throughout the text. As we dance between reality and fairy tale, you will see the following qualities and motifs woven between the two Cinderella versions and my mother’s story: absent mother, absent father, abandonment, perseverance, patience, kindness, birds, housework, stepmother, stepsisters, fairy godmother, the magic carriage, the dog, the dream come true....

Let us take the beginnings from the two versions to introduce us to the main characters of the Cinderella fairy tale. The Little Golden Book, begins in the following way:

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a widowed gentleman and his lovely daughter, Ella. Ella was a beautiful girl. She had golden hair, and her eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots.

My mother, Joni, has a deep sense that while she was in the womb, in 1949, her family existed in harmony and happiness. With just her older sister Nancy to care for, her mom and dad were enjoying their early marriage. They laughed a lot, and their life was fun and spontaneous. Her mother Martha was a keenly intelligent woman, Salutatorian in her co-ed high school class (second to her best friend), and skilled in the debate club. She was highly creative and could bring a sense of magic and joy as she played the piano. She loved God, and could yodel magnificently. Joni’s father, Robert Culling, was hard-working, doing whatever he could to support the family. At one time he worked for a telephone company, climbing up telephone poles to make repairs. He had married the one-of-a-kind Martha whose successful father had been good friends with Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, but who had died when Martha was two years old. A wild child in her early years, Martha’s irreverence towards conformity was always alive within her spirited nature. 

From Left to Right: Martha, Joni, Robert, Nancy. About a year before the divorce.

When Joni was born, the stress of the second child and birth met with a deteriorating marriage. Martha had no breast milk to give the new infant. Taken to a doctor’s office, it was said that, “this baby is not going to make it through the night unless you feed her with an eyedropper every two hours.” My mother’s life was saved over the course of this pivotal night, by her paternal grandparents. Where was her father?   

At home, Martha’s unique personality and traits were not paired with a propensity for domesticity, a rigid expectation for mothers in the 1950’s. In addition, Martha struggled with manic episodes. Bizarre behaviours emerged, unaccepted by the surrounding society. Robert would come home from work to a house in disarray, dishes and beds unmade. Diapers were hung up to dry around the house on clotheslines and biblical verses were written on the wall. 

I never found out my grandmother’s diagnosis on paper, but learned of her multiple hospitalizations and electric shock treatments that resulted in losses of memory. Today she would likely be diagnosed with Bipolar I. Her episodes manifested in intense bouts of mania that would frighten my mom as a child. Martha’s voice would get high and shrill, and the extreme energy meant for my mom a loss of home and harmony. To this day my mother can’t stand to watch “I Love Lucy” as Lucille Ball showed similar traits to her mother when she would enter those stressful episodes. Martha was hospitalized on a few occasions and Joni remembers how her father dealt with these difficulties by removing his daughters from the house. She reflected on this while looking at that opening picture of Cinderella with her father in the Little Golden Book:

When I look at this picture I feel warmth in my heart for my Dad. He really loved Nancy and I and would take us over to his parents for us to stay with them when things were unstable. In a letter, my mother wrote that she felt our Dad really loved us and she felt us being with him was best. 

Despite their difficulties, Robert and Martha had friends and acquaintances. One of them was a woman named Barbara who lived across the street. She was always well put together, with red hair “from the bottle,” make-up and nice clothes. She kept herself and her house orderly despite being left by her husband unexpectedly with several children of her own. She was curvaceous and beautiful, with a love of and emulation of popular movie stars. One day Robert left to be with Barbara, leaving Martha and the two girls behind. Living in what must have been the utmost heartbreak, Martha’s ability to care for her daughters declined.

Joni was 4 years of age when the divorce was finalized, and for the second time in her life she was dangerously malnourished. She had become severely weak and had collapsed. She was brought into the hospital for emergency care. After recovering in the hospital, the sisters were brought from place to place in the attempt to find the care they needed. They eventually moved back in with Martha full time when she moved to San Diego with a new partner, Jim.  

Every day they would eat french fries and were handed chocolate covered peanuts for snacks. It was normal for them to just walk around and eat, they never sat down as a family. As unstable as things were, however, my mom felt that she could be herself joyfully at many periods. 

There is a picture from this time of Nancy and Joni feeding the pigeons. Martha brought them to the park frequently and they all loved to feed the birds. In most versions of Cinderella, she has a connection to birds and small animals. Egyptian Rhodopes, the oldest known version of the Cinderella tale, is found by the Pharoah after an eagle takes her slipper and drops it at his feet. This has evolved to the Disney Cinderella, who sings kindly with the birds and is aided by them in multiple ways. In almost every culture, birds embody the language of the soul. 

My Mom, Left, and her sister Nancy, Right. This time in San Diego would be the last time they lived with their mother, Martha.

Almost all my memories of my grandmother are connected to birds. My grandmother’s favorite song to play on the piano was the gospel song, “On the Wings of the Dove.” When visiting my grandmother, my mom and dad would always take us out to feed the ducks and geese in the San Bernardino park with loaves of white bread. To this day, my mother and I feel as though we can glimpse the image of Martha in the scene and song “Feed the Birds” in the movie Mary Poppins. It’s as if the soul and essence of my grandmother calls out: Though her words are simple and few / "Listen, listen", she's calling to you...

Martha also introduced Nancy and Joni to church every Sunday and the larger spiritual universe that she believed existed beyond them. No matter what was happening, my mother found that there was another divine reality that could be experienced. All cuddled up in bed, they would learn about the Bible and were taught about the 10 Commandments. 

Martha’s partner, Jim, was lots of fun and had many good qualities. They were together for many years, having two additional children (who were both later adopted out). Despite the good times however, Jim was unfortunately an alcoholic. He was often found lying around the house unconscious. A loud and escalating fight ensued one night between him and Martha, causing the neighbors to call the police.

Joni clearly remembers the day she was taken away from her mother. She was in the 3rd grade. She had little emotion about the departure, instinctively feeling it was somehow the right thing. She remembers seeing her box of beloved toys but could not take anything with her. The Police Officer dropped his glove. She picked it up for him, and there was a kind feeling for the tall, young man in uniform who accepted the glove. She never saw the toys or the clothes she’d had there again. Just wearing what they had on, Nancy and Joni got in the back of the police car.  The two sisters spent some time at a series of shelters, and a foster home. At last, word must have reached Joni’s father that the girls were in these homes away from their mother or any family. The time had come for them to live in Covina, Los Angeles area, with Robert and Barbara. 

Nancy, Left, and My Mom, Right. They won these dolls at the shelter and kept them as a source of pride on their beds for many years. Barbara made them remove the dolls from their bed while at their stay in Covina.

In the French version by Charles Perault, in 1697, the “evil stepmother” and sisters are introduced right away, even before Cinderella herself: 

Once there was a gentlemen who married, for his second wife, the proudest and most haughty woman that was ever seen. She had by a former husband, two daughters who were, indeed, exactly like her in all things. 

My mother responded in a written reflection to the picture of the Stepmother and Stepsisters provided in the Little Golden Book: 

The first picture of the step mother - There’s a lot of emotion when I look at this picture. The stepmother is dressed in a rich manner, wearing make-up, hair in perfect place, with a fancy dress on with a high ruffle collar. Her two daughters are dressed with care.

Barbara, Joni’s new stepmother, had her own Cinderella story when she was growing up. Her mother had disappeared and it was never known what happened to her. She could have died or left but was never seen again. She was raised by her father and grandmother and learned from an early age how to clean and manage a household. A clean and orderly house was what signified to her that the family was functioning properly. This translated as a strictness around cleanliness that Barbara upheld as a homemaker. The demand for constant cleaning is one of the most recognizable aspects of the Cinderella tale. It is important to my mother, however, that Barbara is not simplified or cast unfairly in the “evil stepmother” role. She had wonderful qualities and held the big, mixed family together in many notable ways. She was joyous and spontaneous, and had an amazing sense of humour. She brought the family together each night with delicious dinners and made popcorn for everyone as they sat around the television for their favorite evening shows.  The strictness manifested in her expectation of orderliness, cleanliness and helpfulness that my mother was simply not ready or equipped to embody in her being. Joni could not fit into the mold her stepmother expected of her. 

Instilling what she herself had learned at a young age, Barbara gave cleaning responsibilities to each one of the children. She was very fair with this division of labor. My mother writes her response to Cinderella depicted in her work clothes: “I actually like how Cinderella is depicted in her daily work outfit… Work was a big thing with my step mother Barbara. On Saturdays we all had to change our sheets, clean our rooms and we each had a separate chore to do.”

Joni’s elder sister Nancy learned that the way to get along well in this household was to help out. This came naturally to Nancy as she had taken care of Joni while living with their mother, Martha. Nancy was separated from this sisterly role at this time and given a separate room from Joni. 

Joni had never been taught any cleaning skills by her own mother and had never been given these kinds of responsibilities. Walking into Barbara’s house was like going into a Macy’s showroom of home furniture, where everything was perfect. No matter what she did or tried it was never good enough for her stepmother. When she completed a task it would always be greeted with a frown. Joni never received love, affection or support to do better from Barbara. She just couldn’t fit the family system of cleanliness and order after what she had experienced with her own mother. She instantly represented the family shadow and quickly became the household’s scapegoat.

From an English version of Cinderella, 1810

Perault:

No sooner were the ceremonies of their wedding over than the stepmother began to show her true colors… She employed her in the meanest work of the house: scouring

the dishes and tables and scrubbing madam’s room and those of her daughters.

Each day when Robert got home from work, Barbara would complain about Joni - what she did, what she couldn’t do, in individual conversations with Robert at night. Sometimes Barbara would make fun of Joni in front of the other children. There were seven children: two were Robert’s, four were Barbara’s and there was the youngest, “the favorite” Roberta who was born to both Barbara and Robert. Nancy recounted a painful memory of her younger sister Joni walking across the room one evening, her low self-esteem apparent by the way she was carrying herself. Where had the joyous girl from San Diego gone, so comfortable in her body? Joni’s left hand had gone lifeless, and looked limp and strange as she walked. Barbara picked up on this odd appearance and mimicked my mother’s movements in a way that made the rest of the children laugh. I wonder if this was a case of hysterical paralysis or conversion disorder during this time of stress. Sigmund Freud discovered this kind of paralysis common during Victorian times, a time infamous for its oppression of women. In addition to this episode, Barbara would make fun of Joni as “the slow one” who just couldn’t “get it” like the other children could.   

Perault continued:

The poor girl bore all of this patiently and dared not tell her father, who would have scolded her, for his wife ruled him entirely. When she had done her work, she used to go into the chimney corner and sit down among the cinders and ashes, which is the reason why they called her Cinderwench. But the younger of the sisters, who was not so rude and mean as the elder, called her Cinderella. 

My mother remembers her own stepsisters: “I also inherited two older sisters with my stepmother, but only the older one was mean to me. The younger of the two older stepsisters was closer to my age and we shared a room and got pretty close.”

Similar to the Fairy Tale of Hansel and Gretel, whose father abandons his own children out into the forest at the bequest of his wife, the fairy tale of Cinderella also reveals not just the cruelty of the stepmother figure, but the additional absence and neglect of the father figure. 

Joni was afraid of her stepmother and did not feel that she could go to her father for help. She was so afraid of Barbara that she did not want to walk past her at night to use the only restroom in the house. She would refrain from using the toilet before she went to sleep and would often wet the bed. You can imagine, in addition to not meeting her stepmother’s cleaning standards, the baffling reality of a bed wet by this 4th grade stepdaughter.

One day it all came to a head. Barbara was speaking to Joni about something and my mother said the word, “No.” Misunderstanding that Joni was back talking to Barbara, Robert took her into the bathroom and gave her the harshest beating of her life with a belt. He lost control and couldn’t stop. He later recalled that Barbara had been the one to stop him. The house was deadly quiet with the weight of a profound wrong-doing. Barbara tried to hug my mother to comfort her. My mother did not wish to be hugged because she had wet herself in the incident. 

It wasn’t long after this that Robert thought it would be better if the girls lived with their grandparents in Wyoming. Nancy spoke with their father, keeping him awake during the long drive. My mother slept almost the entire way, an escape from the difficult transition. Once again these daughters of Martha were not a good fit for the household in which they lived. 

Perault: 

At last, the happy day came. They went to court, and Cinderella followed them with her eyes as long as she could and, when she had lost sight of them, she began to cry. 

Her godmother found her all in tears, and asked her what was the matter. “I wish I could -- I wish I could --” But Cinderella was not able to speak the rest, being interrupted by her tears and sobbing.

This godmother of hers, who was a fairy, said, “You wish to go to the ball -- is that not so?”

My mother directly connects the likeness of the bubbly Fairy Godmother of the Disney version to her own Grandmother, her mother’s mother, with whom she stayed after this difficult time: 

The fairy godmother looks a lot like my Grandmother. She was chubby and smiled a lot and was always talking! She taught Nancy and I so much about marriage, children, mending socks, keeping “house,” hanging laundry in the sun and even putting on rouge and lipstick. She read Reader’s Digest condensed novels and loved being sociable with the neighbors. She was like “magic” for Nancy and I - she had money to spend when she needed it, she had a big two-story home with a yard. She had a pale green Cadillac that Grandpa drove her and us with “electric windows” (a new thing in those days). 

This is the closest we’ll get in my mom’s story to a pumpkin-turned carriage! There was also a beloved family dog named Ring who would race up the stairs every day to meet the sisters and play with them. But perhaps most magical of all was the gift her grandmother brought home to my mother one day, in her fifth grade year: The Little Golden Book of Cinderella. 

Aunt Nancy, Right, My Mom, Left. This picture is from the time she went to live with her grandmother, her “fairy godmother” who gave her the Cinderella book.

When she opened the book about Cinderella, she found a story about a little girl who WAS loved by her father. She found in the story a stepmother and stepsisters that felt familiar. It was after reading this book she discovered that she no longer had to believe what her stepmother had said about her - that she wasn’t enough, that she could do no right. The book also gave her hope - if Cinderella could have experiences like the ones she’d had, it was possible for her to someday have a happy ending too. Ready to begin stepping into her own worth (it is a life-long process), my mother’s view of herself had its first spark of being transformed:

Her godmother barely touched her with her wand, and at that same instant her rags were turned into clothes of silver, all trimmed with gold and jewels. This done, she gave her a pair of glass slippers, the prettiest in the whole world. Thus decked out, Cinderella climbed into her coach. (Perault, p. 76) 

In the Disney version, the Fairy Godmother looks at the color of Cinderella’s eyes to decide the color of her dress. This mirroring of the eyes, the “windows to the soul” reveals her true inner beauty and essence, not just the most fashionable dress for the ball. The word “ball” itself has at its latin etymological root “to dance” and further carries the pun of the spherical “ball” - an image of wholeness. The “ball” for my mother at this age was of course not a dance with a handsome prince (though she did have her first boyfriend that year), but a “mother and father who loved each other, spoke to each other with respect and could make a nice home for my sister and I.” It was a true gift from her grandparents at this age that she could experience what this felt like. 

The glass slippers are transparent, and so Cinderella is not stepping here into a disguise, but into the true revealing of her nature to the larger world. The most profound quality of Cinderella is her kindness, which is apparent in almost all versions of this tale. I am lucky to say that of all qualities, this value has always shined from my mother: “The book said, ‘Cinderella was kind to everyone…’ I’ve always believed in kindness, even back in the 5th grade when Grandma gave me this book.”

In addition the Perault version of the late ends in this way:

The astonishment of her two sisters was great, but it was greater still when Cinderella pulled from her pocket the other slipper. At this, there appeared her godmother, who touched Cinderella’s clothes with her wand, making them more magnificent than any she had ever worn before.

Her two sisters threw themselves at her feet to beg pardon for all the ill-treatment they had made her undergo. Cinderella embraced them and cried that she forgave them with her whole heart and desired them always to love her. (p. 81)

Not only did my mother forgive her stepmother and the situations she had faced from her family in her childhood, but she continues to genuinely see the good in all people she comes across in life. Old family friends with difficult personality quirks, challenging neighbors, the homeless community in her town, are never left from my mother’s attention or kind conversation. I never quite understood how she could tolerate and continue to help people who would treat her rudely, but I am illuminated now that this must be the Cinderella pattern living within her. 

Having a long and happy marriage was my mother’s dream. It is fun to think about my father as the handsome prince who eventually came along. My mom recounts her meeting here. It is interesting to note that because she is writing this to me she refers to her future husband as “Dad.” After never hearing a direct “I love you” from her father, I wonder now if this word choice reflects the profound healing she had through the process of creating a stable relationship with her husband, my Dad). It is also a fun twist to the original tale that the outfit of my mother’s transformation into feminine beauty was in the form of a cheerleader’s uniform:

The day I met Dad, October 7th, 1967, was also the day we had our first pep rally and we cheerleaders got to wear our cheerleader outfits to school that day. Before the pep rally (or after it) I went into the library with my beautiful purple and gold outfit. Dad liked what he saw and struck up a conversation with me (like the Prince seeing Cinderella in her beautiful dress). 

We got to talking and the librarian ended up throwing us out of the library! So we went outdoors and talked more. 

“From that moment on, everything was a dream come true.” says the book. 

My mom, around the time she met my Dad.

For “some reason” my mom always liked the name Cindy, though, as a nickname, it could not be put on the birth certificate in 1984 when I was born (and my parents did not like the name Cynthia). After six hours of deliberation, my mom and dad came up with the name “Cyndera,” which is now the name I go by. Though it has no formal meaning, it is always remembered by new acquaintances by its similarity to the name “Cinderella.” Do we not live with the stories of our parents, consciously and unconsciously, within and through us? Through this process, the writing of this paper, I see how the story of Cinderella sings through the maternal lineage of my family. It has opened a door to the ancestors, and through this door we have welcomed intergenerational healing. Through these unveiled stories, tears were shed and truth shines through like the magic slipper still in existence at midnight. Though life is complex and ever evolving there IS a happy ending here.

My mother was married for more than thirty years until my father’s death in 2002. She has re-married another wonderful husband and to this day maintains a clean and simple home that is full of peace, love and happiness in Santa Rosa. This re-telling of her childhood experience through the lens of Cinderella has deepened our bond and increased our understanding on many levels. This note was included with my mother’s reflections, along with a picture of herself and my Dad:

Dear Cindy - 

What a long and happy relationship and marriage your Dad and I had! And you were a big part of it. Thank you for all you gave Dad and me (and are continuing to give). I deeply appreciate and love our relationship. 

Love, 

Your Mom

This mother’s day, 2023, will see the end of the pandemic. It will also celebrate yet another Christmas. I can envision now - the tree, the lights and opening the boxes of ornaments. Some are new and some from the distant past. The missing ornaments have been found, reflected in the gold tin of the new additions. On the branches will be hung an ornament for my father, his kind bearded face smiling out from the scene of the newborn baby’s manger. The Naval star will be hung for my eldest brother Josh, who, though he never joined the armed forces, has collected and celebrated the stories of past war heroes (including our paternal grandfather’s presence at Pearl Harbor as a Naval Commander). There too will be the Little Drummer Boy for my brother Jemma who has always moved to the beat of his own drum, who has followed the music of the inner spheres, so like our grandmother Martha, as his gift. And there, at last, is the ornament for my mother, a smiling Cinderella seated in her work dress, at the moment she tries on the slipper: 

And of course the slipper fit, since it was her very own...

My wonderful Mom, as I have known her growing up :)

Happy Mother’s Day!