The Spitfire Grill: My Chance Encounter

Never start flipping through channels when you should be heading for bed.

Bed was already long past due, but I decided to go ahead and quickly check the movie channels. Quickly…yeah right. One of the movies seemed a bit interesting, so I figured I would watch it for a few minutes. Then I decided to wait and see who would show up to claim a bag of food deliberately being left outside. Then I wanted to see how a certain proposal played out. And after that I just had to find out why one of the characters had been in prison. Yes, you guessed it. I watched the rest of the movie.

The movie captivated me—a fairytale that pulled me along intriguing paths winding through an old forest both familiar and strange. An old woman who lives life how she chooses; an inexplicable offering of food; an unseen presence in the woods; a small-town gathering place; a lost son; a dying town. And into the midst of all this stumbles a blemished outsider hoping to find a new life.

Through the story one finds the familiar and expected strands of wariness, suspicion, jealousy, friendship, love, betrayal, and sacrifice. The story unfolds fairly predictably. But then the magic of a fairytale isn’t in the uniqueness of the story. It’s found in the spark of life breathed into the familiar that transforms the mundane to magic. All is still familiar, but now we see it with unveiled eyes. For a moment, we glimpse beneath the surface, and sit entranced.