Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Dillard remembers a Christmas Eve as a young girl when her family went out to dinner. When they come home, she hears a commotion at the front door, and her parents tell her Santa Claus has arrived. Dillard reacts to the news less than enthusiastically: “It was Santa Claus. Whom I never—ever—wanted to meet” (145). Dillard runs upstairs and hides, refusing to come down. As an adult, Dillard knows Santa was actually Miss White, a woman who lived across the street, and that this incident confused some important figures in her mind, “making of Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity” (146). Another incident causes Dillard to run from Miss White—when Miss White shows her a magnifying glass and lets the glass warm her skin. Afraid because her skin starts to burn, Dillard runs home crying, and even though Miss White calls after her, “I didn’t look back” (148). Dillard wonders if she has similarly misunderstood moments when God tried to teach her something new, but she ran away in fear. Dillard believes that God means only love, but humans often misunderstand him, letting fear overcome them, like when Christ came to the world, “and we were all afraid” (148).