ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, July 1, 1996 TAG: 9607010026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Monty S. Leitch
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
LATE IN the afternoon, as the sun sets, it casts its light through the pines just outside my kitchen window, at precisely the right angle, the right time, to catch the fall of pollen. If I look out at this moment, I see a profusion of sparkling confetti drifting down through the air, a rain of glitter under the trees, a showering of gold.
Back when the world was very young, a king named Acrisios had a beautiful daughter named Danae. She was sweet-tempered and pretty, but the king was still disappointed; he'd really wanted a son. So he visited the oracles to ask if this might ever come to pass.
No, the oracles told him, No sons. Worse still, they said, your own grandson will kill you.
Naturally, the king wished to avoid this fate, but what were his options? Kill his daughter? Surely, that would enrage the Furies (who were already touchy most of the time); besides, the girl was pretty, and the king rather liked it when she looked up at him and smiled. Oh, Daddy, she'd say, you're cute.
So Acrisios decided, instead, to build a tower of bronze and lock up Danae there for all of her life, away from any potential boyfriends, beaux or suitors that he could imagine.
But, as you will have already noticed, Acrisios was short on imagination. Otherwise he might have imagined granddaughters instead of grandsons, he might have imagined a little compassion on his daughter's part (Son, be nice to your granddaddy, now), he might have imagined divine intervention. Which, as it turns out, is what happened.
For one day, as Danae moped about her tower, she noticed a mist gathering in one corner. Gradually, the mist turned to golden droplets that rained down over the room. Then, before she could quite grasp what was happening, the golden droplets gathered themselves into a golden youth, who stood before Danae, beautiful, ripe and ready. Even if she hadn't been lonely and bored, how could she resist an entrance like that? Of course, she couldn't. Neither could she resist a number of subsequent golden entrances. Besides, she knew all along it was Zeus.
Acrisios was pretty shocked, some months later, to learn that Danae had a son - a boy named Perseus, who went on to have a few adventures of his own, including an accident with a discus that did, indeed, years and years later, lay his grandfather out. It's always a mistake to try to trick your fate, as Zeus could have told Acrisios, if Acrisios had had a mind to listen.
I have sometimes walked about in the rain. In particular, I remember a summer afternoon when I was a girl. The rain came down in a steady, silvery shower, without thunder or lightning, and I roamed, free, all around: our driveway, our yard, my grandparents' spacious, mysterious yard; even those stretches of distant garden that, under the sun, seemed too shady and closed for safety.
The rain washed over me like a caress, into my eyes and mouth, and down the small of my back. I was a little girl, very young, thrilled to be allowed such a great adventure.
But now I think: I was a little girl, beloved daughter, encouraged into the quest, showered with silver and gold, and the love of a father who never feared me or regretted me, and who never considered, even for a second, any type of bronze tower.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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