Cabin in the Woods - An excerpt from Maria´s journal
Today´s prompt was CABIN IN THE WOODS.
Another prompt done, this one with potential to be developed into a vignette or even slip neatly into a short story (I already have one in mind)
It’s meant to be funny, with just the lightest touch of angst when mentioning the Captain’s grief — nothing more.
I just hope it brings a smile to your face. It´s Monday, we all need it!
An excerpt from Maria´s journal
“It is good to know that out there, in a forest in the world, there is a cabin where something is possible...” Sylvain Tesson
"Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing." Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Innocence is not lack of experience, but being free of experience." Jiddu Krishnamurti
We stumbled upon the cabin in the woods on one of our long rambles, the kind that began with no particular destination and ended wherever the children’s whims carried us. The girls usually begged to climb the hills so they could gather armfuls of wildflowers and weave them into wreaths. The boys, on the other hand, were creatures of the forest, always drawn to the shadows of the trees and the promise of adventure beneath their branches, which, more often than not, mean the rescue of a small wounded animal they would bring back to the barn to be cared for. That day, Friedrich and Kurt won the debate, so we headed into the woods.
The cabin was not ruined so much as abandoned. Its timbers stood solid, but the place had the unmistakable look of something left unfinished, as though someone had walked away halfway through a plan. It was clear the children had taken it over. Scattered everywhere were objects that could only have been carried there by them. Old dolls and stuffed animals, some with missing limbs, a battered trunk overflowing with doll clothes, a jumble of wooden building blocks, a handful of carved animals, a dollhouse in ruins, and a little pram with one wheel hopelessly askew.
“I’ll fix that for you today, if we have time, Marta,” Friedrich murmured, resting his hand on his younger sister’s head. She lit up instantly, her smile bright.
“Can you fix the dollhouse too, Fritzi?” Gretl asked hopefully. Only she and Marta ever called him that. He loathed the nickname with a passion.
“Father was building this for Mother when she passed,” Liesl whispered to me, her voice low as Friedrich and Kurt knelt beside the crumbling dollhouse. Her next words explained her hushed tone. “They wanted a place to be together when they wanted… you know… alone time.”
“Yes. You know… kissing.”
“They did not need to come all the way up here for just kissing, you silly.”
“No, they wanted to come here to make more babies.”
I was not sure whether to blush or roll my eyes.
Seven children. Yes, seven. The bus driver who had brought me to Aigen only weeks before had joked that Captain von Trapp was single‑handedly leading Austria’s post‑war repopulation efforts (1). After hearing Liesl’s explanation, I found myself perilously close to believing him.
Even someone like me, who had pledged her life to His service, understood perfectly well what that meant.
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it… (2)”
That was for people out in the secular world, the ones living ordinary lives. It was only natural for them, wasn’t it? As long as it was sanctioned by the Catholic Church through the sacrament of marriage, I never saw anything out of the ordinary in it. Nothing unusual.
My cheeks warmed despite myself, a reaction I was becoming accustomed to ever since the Reverend Mother had sent me out into the world, as she put it. The elder von Trapp children spoke of their parents’ affection with a mixture of embarrassment and awe, and, apparently, they had noticed far more than their father realized. I had never needed to think about such matters before, let alone worry about them, but now I supposed I must keep it in mind. If I remained in the household after the Captain married the Baroness,
Alone time was what the elder von Trapp children meant whenever they spoke, in hushed voices and reddened cheeks, about their parents… you know… alone time. They were a remarkably observant group, and apparently their mother and father had been a very passionate couple, affectionate in ways impossible for the children not to notice, even when they were very small. I had never before needed to think about such matters, least of all worry about them, but now I supposed I must keep it in mind. If I am still here after the Captain marries the Baroness, I shall have to speak with him about how to handle such little indiscretions. Not to scold, merely to warn him that children do notice far more than adults imagine. I certainly did when I was their age, though in my case the memories were not among the pleasant ones. Animals mating on the farm were never a pretty sight, even though they were doing precisely what God intended them to do. And upstairs, those awful sounds my uncle made when he and my aunt were… no, those are memories better left untouched. At least I can be grateful that he and his poor wife left a kinder, gentler impression on their own children than the one my foster parents left on me.
The cabin in the woods became, as I understood, one of the children’s hiding places. It was where they brought their old toys, and even some small objects belonging to their mother before their father banished them to the attic or threw them away. The pram with the broken wheel and the crumbling dollhouse, for instance, had belonged to the first Baroness when she was a little girl. That was where these things had mysteriously disappeared to, and where the children went whenever the children wanted to get away from one of the eleven governesses that preceded me. That was where they hid from their father when he was in one of his dangerous moods.
No, not that he would ever raise a hand to any of them — that I learned during my first hours in that house. It had been one of the things that Frau Schmidt had warned me about.
“I don’t know about your methods, Fräulein, but I must warn you that the Captain abhors any kind of corporal punishment,” she had said, her voice just a little brisk. Then, in a more rushed tone. “One of the eleven before you was sent away immediately after he heard she had struck Kurt. Apparently he had a rough time in boarding school, and he refuses to do the same to his children. That was what his poor wife told me that once in confidence, you see. He sometimes has them making those military drills of his, and if he is particularly mad at them he sends them to their room without dinner, but I think that is by far the worst I’ve seen him doing to discipline them. But he has never laid a hand on them.”
Frau Schmidt, as I soon learned, was a little too fond of gossip, but I knew the truth of her words when I read later that night, in the Captain’s own handwriting, the household rules stating that corporal punishment of any kind was not acceptable.
“Please don’t tell Father,” Louisa had said in the cabin, her voice suddenly stripped of its usual sharpness. Her face, which could be as harsh and unforgiving as her father’s, now had a look of near desperation that tugged at my heart. “He will tear this place down if he knows we come here.”
“And he’ll make us perform those military drills before breakfast again,” Kurt said.
What else could I do? I gave them my promise, even knowing there would be consequences if the Captain found out that their hiding place had become my own as well. That the children trusted me enough to show me the cabin in the woods spoke volumes. It meant that, for now, I had their trust. A fragile, precious thing, built not on drills or rules, but on shared secrets in a half‑finished cabin in the woods.
“What if he comes here looking for you?” I asked, torn between duty and the fragile trust they were offering me.
“He will not. He won’t come here,” Louisa replied with certainty.
“He never comes this way anymore, it reminds him of Mother,” Brigitta added quietly.
“He can’t bear that,” Friedrich agreed.
“What if he wants to finish it for the Baroness?” Marta asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yes! He will want some alone time with her too,” Gretl agreed.
Brigitta shook her head, skeptical as ever. “She doesn’t look like she wants more children. She even avoids us.”
“And she doesn’t know our names,” Kurt said, offended. “She called me Konrad the other day.” He said the old‑fashioned name as though it tasted sour.
“You were lucky,” Friedrich sighed. “She called me Friedemann.”
“She can’t have any babies,” Louisa declared. “Natasha told me.” Natasha, as I had recently learned, was a school friend and apparently the children’s primary source of information about the adult world, accurate or not.
“They kiss when they think we are lot looking,” said Brigitta. I´ve always known that she noticed everything. Even that.
“Kissing is not enough for making babies,” Kurt informed them haughtily.
“What do we need to make a baby, Fräulein?”
That was the moment I should have accepted the help and shifted the course of the conversation. Gracefully, firmly… anything. Even in Sister Berthe´s style, ordering everyone to be quiet, kiss the floor, form a line, and march straight to confession. But I was not a sea captain, nor a sea nun, if such a thing existed. I was simply a postulant from the mountains, and before I could gather my thoughts, the discussion had already turned sharply into territory I had never imagined navigating with seven children.
And I must write what little Marta asked next, because when I began this journal, I vowed to be honest about everything I set down in these pages.
“But I want more brothers and sisters,” she said earnestly, “so I can take care of them when I’m older, like Liesl did with us. Could you make a baby with Father before you go back to the Abbey?”
Yes. That is what being a governess of seven is like.
Note added years later in a few lines at the edge of that page.
Aigen-bei-Salzburg, Austria
I did not return to the Abbey. I also did not give the Captain one baby, I gave him five more…
(1) The line about repopulating Austria is not original, it came from a story and an author I do not recall now. If anyone knows where this is from, please let me know, so that I can give her full credit. (2) Genesis 1:28.
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