Years ago, when I was a child and we were separated, my mother sent me a book: The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
It's a frightening book even now, about pain and loss and death (and never mind that I could not even begin to pronounce the author's name), but it was from my mom and I tried to read it. I won't ruin the book or (or the movie) for you, but the story takes place in a desert, and its undercurrent is about the magical nature of children - how they can impart wisdom and understanding without themselves having either.
Perhaps my recent stay in the desert put me in mind of the Little Prince, or maybe it was an incident that occurred when Lee and I went to the movies in Cathedral City's Town Center.
This particular town center looks very much like the kind of dusty desert outpost you'd see in movies like Morocco or Gunga Din, but with an IMAX theater at one end and the Mary Pickford Theatre at the other.
The Pickford Theatre is a replica of the old-style movie palaces of the '20s and '30s. In fact, it is named after one of the most famous stars of the early 20th century (and former Desert resident, along with husband Buddy Rogers), the absolutely tiny Mary Pickford. (I know she was tiny, because one of her former costumes graces a display in a little alcove off the main lobby.)
Pickford, and her handsome then husband Douglas Fairbanks, were among the first generation of Hollywood "royalty." They looked down their noses at their outre daughter-in-law Joan Crawford (or so she thought) but hobnobbed with Russian aristocracy who were then fleeing the horror of the Russian Revolution (and thus were willing to enjoy the company of people they might previously have run down in the street).
In fact, one Russian aristocrat made Pickford the gift of a Faberge egg - not a fancy one - but one with the distinction of having been given to him by Prince Alexei of the Romanov family. It was the tradition, he said, of the Romanovs to give these eggs at Christmastime.
And so, in a display case in a little alcove off the main lobby of the Pickford Theatre in Cathedral City Town Center, is a white porcelain egg, once held by another little prince long ago. Having looked at it and its letter of provenance, we then walked away and out of the building; outside, where the desert night sky was filled with stars that were large and small, but flinty and out of reach, and it was as lonely as any wilderness.
