Magic, Pure and Simple

This is about magic.

Not extravaganzas with whirling wand and prancing performer shouting Presto Change-o to reveal the monkeys have vanished.

That kind of magic trick is on us. In fact, we pay for it.

I mean the simple occurrence that appears out of the blue and stops you in your tracks. A moment that has no meaning for anyone else. But you.

Or me, in this recent case.

Rational people will call it a coincidence. A random appearance logically explained. Or foolish magical thinking.

Still, sudden magic happens to me all the time, at just the right moment. Maybe I’m guilty of assigning themes and metaphors unnecessarily because I’m an English major, but there seems to be something magnetic about the questions that plague me.

Maybe I just plain worry magic into existence. 

When we lived in Wisconsin, I found myself on a hamster wheel of decisions that yielded no results, despite my overachieving efforts. I’d all but given up, unless an extraordinary something signaled me to stay the course.

Then there it was.

As I pulled into our driveway, a red tulip sprouted in the grass next door where no flower had ever bloomed. When I mentioned it to our neighbor, she didn’t believe me and walked around the corner of her house to where I pointed. “Oh, my,” she said. “My mother planted tulips there when I was a little girl. Nothing has bloomed for more than 50 years.” 

But it bloomed because I needed it to.

Because I’m a writer, I spend years revising my picture book manuscripts. That’s my pattern. Since March I’ve re-imagined a particular story about a little girl who moves to a new town. Yes, it worked, but then again, no, it didn’t. I needed something to inspire her journey, something larger than the “new kid” story line.

I added a mermaid with a splash of silver in the waves.

The story took on a yearning that succeeded until I started second guessing myself. It woke me at night and chewed at me during the day. I thought, A mermaid in the Midwest? Really, Karen?  

Then there it was.

A splash of silver.

Somehow a length of shiny paper, all four feet of it, flew out of nowhere to twist itself into our butterfly bush. Fluttering outside our window, it said, Yes, keep the mermaid and clung through two days of wind and rain until I could step outside and take its picture.

Then it untangled itself and blew away.

Message delivered.

Like magic.