

One day Doris’s doorbell rang, and she opened her door. That was her call to adventure. Can you imagine something so mundane changing a life? Lots of movies work this way. Especially romantic comedies. In movies, they talk about the “meet cute,” a mundane moment where the romantic leads meet. In The Holiday, the character played by Kate Winslet meets her romantic interest played by Jack Black when he rings her doorbell and she doesn’t know how the technology works to answer it.
Doris receives adulation from fairies and bats through their laughter. This is her reward. Her honey cakes worked to bring joy and peace. Doris’s reward lies in helping the fairies see the fruits of their folly-filled labor––the witness of their first joke. This gives the fairies wisdom, and they can use it to give them courage to not fly away and be brave.
Doris dies to herself here in the silence of her lair and the uncertainty about the future. She has faced this ordeal with all the powers she has––hospitality, baking and a positive outlook on life and the belief in the power of peace to build community. But will her love in action be enough? She feeds the bats when the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard, shrill and sweet. In the laughter of both the bats and the fairies, Doris faces and overcomes her deep inner conflict of wanting to fit in as a duck-sized fairy in a bat-infested world.