It's all around us if we can open our souls to see it.
I grew up in a world without magic or mystery, without wonder or excitement. It was most definitely a world of my own making I'm certain. My parents were, and are still, good, solid people who work hard and behave properly. I was raised in that fashion, in a world where strange things didn't happen and were not condoned. As a result, I wouldn't describe my childhood as magical in any way. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and even the Tooth Fairy were somehow prudent and sensible, almost puritanical.
I have an excellent memory but I can remember few instances of unbridled joy as a child. Those that I do remember weren't at my own house either, but that of my cousin and usually outside in the wild woods behind her house that stretched for miles into the untamed mountains. My own childhood home sat on a hill with a large highway on one side and a busy rural road on the other. There was a steep cliff-like drop on another and multiple barbed wire fences in the last direction. With danger on every side, there was no freedom from my worried mother. Freedom extended a few feet beyond the patio, just enough to reach the swing set and trampoline and that was it. I sometimes wonder if my dislike of "outside" stems from the childhood admonitions of danger. Of course, Georgia in July, with its' humid, sticky hotness also played a factor I'm certain.
I think childhood is the time in our lives where we have the best chance of finding magic. Everything in childhood feels so real, even the make believe parts. A lack of childhood magic makes us old before our time. I was a solemn child, studious and polite but almost debilitatingly shy at times. It wasn't "sensible" to be shy though so I forced myself to act like I wasn't. I still suffer from the effects of that forced friendliness.
So, I found myself graduating from high school, older than my years. There was a yearning in my heart though to venture beyond my normal and create a new normal. My parents did not understand my desire to go somewhere other than local community college and they were baffled by my desire to study foreign languages. Their minds were too practical and the world too small and plain in their view.
So, I went away and found a new world. It was not without its' problems and there were plenty of things that seemed trivial and dull. Then, I was assigned a book to read, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It changed my life.
Magical realism was the next step, the evolution of what my life was missing. It was real, but something more. I started looking for the magic in the everyday and I found it more and more. The world seemed to change before my eyes. One day in the fall, I was walking on a flagstone path that meandered between two buildings. The colors of autumn were all around me. The air was crisp and the changing of the seasons, the slow march of forever, was tangible. The path was somewhat deserted, an unusual happenstance. Suddenly, without warning, I was caught in the middle of a whirlwind. Yellow leaves the color of sunshine swirled around me on all sides and even above my head. I stood, transfixed, in the middle of it all, untouched by even the whisper of wind. All I could think was, "This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me." I was so normal but I was standing in the middle of magic. It was awe-inspiring and humbling at the same time. I felt immeasurably blessed and somehow, changed forever.
In the spring, I discovered what would become my most beautiful dream yet. I returned from a dull and dreary spring break surrounded by maddening normalcy and discovered that the world outside my dorm room was covered in pink and smelled unearthly. Surely, it was the scent of heaven, but it wasn't. It was cherry trees and it's beauty and scent enveloped me in an otherworldly experience each time I went out the door. I left via those doors closest to the cherry trees even when it made more sense to leave by a different door. I would stand beneath the boughs and look up through the pinkened limbs heavy with blooms to see the possiblities inherent in a clear spring sky peeking through the maze of limbs. I hoped to hold onto the moment forever because spring blossoms are fickle things and a sudden rain shower could divest these trees of their magical blossoms at any time. I enjoyed every moment of those trees that I could. I studied lying on a blanket surrounded by their glory with the spring sun warming my back.
I paused and savored, but they went away. Magic is a promise though. It's everywhere and as long as you keep looking, you'll find it again. Those trees bloomed each spring and the hopefulness in my heart kept me living in the same dorm all four years. The promise of the cherry trees was enough.
I graduated though and I left those trees behind, but guess what? My new house has a cherry tree out front, small and too severely pruned by someone who can't see magic or imagine possibilities. The blooms this spring were a balm to my weary wintered heart and a delight to my soul.
Magic happens all around. You'll see it if you start to look. The proof is in my cherry tree.
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