I believe in magic. Yes. You read that right. I. Believe. In. Magic. I know most people SAY they don’t, but deep down either they really do or they’d like to. I’m not talking about pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat or make-the-woman-disappear kind of magic. No, this is the kind of magic that comes from serendipitous happenings and observations, and leaves you with a sense of tingly-wonder-happiness. This is the kind of magic that happens when: someone you’ve been thinking about all day calls you out of the blue; your child falls asleep on your chest after two hours of nonstop fussing; you wake up earlier than desired and look outside to an amazing sunrise; you find the keys that have been missing for weeks in your purse; a song starts on the radio that you haven’t heard in years but fits your mood exactly; or you make every green light on the day you oversleep and still make it on time. This magic is always around, and it wants to be seen. But if you miss it, this magic WILL go away and be fickle to return. When you see it, be sure to recognize and name it. Magic appreciates the positive reinforcement.

Sometimes, magic is silly, and wants to play. How do you play with magic? With your imagination. The easiest example of this is naming cloud shapes in the sky. I started bringing The Girlie outside to look at clouds as soon as she could developmentally see past her hand. When she was two or three we’d point shapes out to each other and make up stories about what we saw. Most of the time the stories involved the mythical land of Kablorki, and the Supreme Fairy who lived at the edge of the Marshmallow Forest. For those of you not acquainted with the Supreme Fairy, she is amazing, and gets her wings into all kinds of adventures. The forest marshmallows were always key to the stories; you had to find and eat different colors of marshmallows to augment the Supreme Fairy’s spells. The S.F. (we’re close friends) always welcomed the help, and we were more than willing to oblige.

I like making up impromptu stories that include fairies, talking flowers, princess mermaids, space creatures, distant lands, singing worms, you name it … ask The Girlie. I make up a lot of stories. To be honest, I forget a lot of them, too. She remembers all of the plot lines though, and will ask me to retrace one from time to time. It’s really hard for me to do it on command and she often corrects me. Just the fact that she asks for a repeated storyline is a piece of magic in itself.

Earlier this week I saw a patch in the road that was a different color from the rest of the pavement. The outline looked like a statue from Easter Island, and I suddenly remembered that Squidward, from the TV show Spongebob Squarepants, lives in an Easter Island head shaped house. As I drove over the area, I felt a little silliness creep into my brain and mused on the roads in the mythical TV land of Bikini Bottom. From there I started humming the theme song to the show, the humming made me smile, and there it was… a little magic for the morning.

Yesterday I noticed that the clouds looked streaky, and I wondered about the wind gusting way up high in the sky. In the middle of the cloud wisps I could see a jauntily perched top hat. I imagined the clouds in a dance, so fast paced, that one cloud must have lost a top hat in the shuffle. I wondered what the clouds were dancing to, and decided that it had to be can-can music, given how fast they were moving by. I pointed the hat shaped cloud out to The Girlie, and once she found it I asked her to snap a photo for me. She treats my imagination as the normal around our house, and often joins in with her own observations. Those shared moments are magical.

Last week I snapped this picture of the faucet in a public bathroom because I thought it looked like an elephant. I giggled as I pulled the trunk toward the cold direction, and wondered if an elephant prefers a certain water temperature to pull up when it draws water. It probably depends on what the water is for… drinking or washing. And, if it’s for washing, does the elephant hold onto it for a few seconds to warm? Would that work? And what happens if an elephant has to sneeze while it’s dealing with all this water nonsense? How hard would it be for an elephant to keep itself from sneezing? I don’t know, but I think it’s hard to stifle a sneeze. My stream of consciousness thoughts were so silly, and so unexpected that the whole moment felt a little magical to me.

Now that I’ve pulled you along this far, let’s move onto a controversial topic in magic: fairies. Are they real? I’m not sure, but I’d like to think that they are. I’ve put a few fairy houses outside in the garden, hoping that if they are real, they will choose to live inside. Maybe fairies are shy, or maybe I’m just unable to recognize them easily, but I like imagining that they are always around. Do I think that fairies are little beautiful ladies with wings? Doubtful. Maybe they look like the cottonwood puffs floating in the wind or the big fuzzy bees flying in the back yard. I like those images. Last year I found a wasp nest inside one of my garden fairy houses. That was disconcerting. Wasps can be randomly mean and I didn’t want to think that fairies would act like that. If the wasps really WERE fairies, well… I don’t know what to say. No, I don’t think they were fairies. They were just wasps.

Message of the Day:Exercise your imagination. Choose to be silly. Find the Magic.