Of all the kinds of magic, however, my favorite is the kind you are born with: a child's magic.
"We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand....The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good... Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know it's happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir.' It just happens."
- Robert R. McCammon, Boys' Life
Unfortunately, this magic gets harder and harder to come by as you get older.
My goal lately has been to try and foster the magic in my daughter and try and regain some of it myself. This is why we make it a point to read at least three books together every day. This is why we create towers with blocks and then knock them down. This is why we experiment with hairstyles and wear Mardi Gras beads like they were diamonds and why sometimes my husband comes home to find me wearing a tiara simply because I'd forgotten I had it on. This is why Kevin has dolls and balls, purses and tractors, a stroller and a ride-on car. This is why we have giggle fests right when I get her out of her crib in the morning and dance parties before lunch.
I want her to have a magical childhood--because I had one.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days. We had a tree in our yard that I could climb and one time I carved an "X" in it so somebody would know I got there first. If I walked down a gravel road through a forest (aka a field of Christmas trees), there were always cookies and ice cream and a Hallmark movie and my Grandpa's lap awaiting me. My siblings and I used our driveway to play "Cops and Robbers" and the stairwell to the basement made a perfect prison. We had "ghosts" and "fairies" and a roller skating rink in our unfinished basement.
When we moved to a place with no trees but a superb gutter and a lot of dirt, my mother dressed my siblings and I in old clothes one afternoon and sent us out to play in the mud until my father came home. We weren't allowed back inside until we were completely covered, that was the rule.
As a little girl, I hosted my share of tea parties and Barbie balls, but I also played ball with my brothers. My older brother wrote his own plays and I co-stared in them (Kid Boy rocks!). I taught my little brother how to run away to the basement. The four of us bobsledded down the stairs in a cardboard box more than once. My little sister and I were playing "Neverland" one day and we were walking the plank (aka the wooden side of my brother's waterbed frame) and we jumped into the ocean a little too hard, not realizing that my brother had left a thumbtack somewhere in his bed, and, well, we'd never seen a flood like that before.
I'm sure my parents were upset, but I don't remember them ever getting mad at us for having an imagination, no matter how many casualties of war we created. We were simply allowed to play, and play free.
I worry about my daughter a lot. I worry about what the world will be like in her future. I worry about her development. I worry about giving her the right kind of experiences and opportunities. I worry that today's society will force the magic from her life a little too soon. I worry, I worry, I worry.
I shouldn't.
You see, I have spend the day alternating between feeding and playing with her and reading Reflection's Contest literature entries for my nephew's elementary school. I don't know any of these children, but their thoughts and words have inspired me today (and, on occasion, made me laugh out loud). There is a little more magic in my heart because of this experience. I wish I could just share every story and poem and essay with everyone (but I'm sure that would be some breach of something so I can't.)
I am excited for the days when I can teach my daughter to create worlds with her words and then we can bring them to life with a few homemade costumes and a camera. I am excited to read chapter books with her and discover the characters of my childhood all over again. I am excited to bake miniature treats for her tea parties and teach her how to slide down the stairs in a sleeping bag. I am excited to make our future swingset into a pirate ship and our living room into field of volcanic lava.
It is my job to give her the chance to be anything she wants to be without the limits of money and adulthood and somebody saying, "you can't do that, you aren't qualified."
Magic qualifies a child to be anything he or she wants to be. Parents, however, are the gatekeepers of the magic. We can either let our children fly or chain them to the ground. I must give her the opportunities--she needs to be the one to take them.
Right now our couches become mountains as she struggles to climb them. Cereal turns into puppy chow as we crawl around on hands and knees. Crayons create scribbled masterpieces and books teach her that there is no limit to the places she can go and the person she can be.
She has no idea that Balto isn't a "real" dog and that her baby's bottle isn't full of milk. She doesn't know that her blocks can't build homes and that when she pats her drums she isn't really creating the music that comes out of them. She doesn't know that her stuffed animals don't really have personalities and that her red shoes aren't really made for dancing.
But, in the end, maybe she is the one who is right about her world.
She has the magic, and I am only trying to hold on to it.
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