Magic

Magic exists at all ages.  As a child, your life is filled with magic.  You can be a beautiful princess in the morning and a special nurse that saves all the hospital patients in the afternoon.  When you are a teen, magic is a bit more tricky to come by.  But occasionally, your gangling armed, slightly rough buzzed hair cut, can't find his way out of paper bag, date is magically transformed into the most sophisticated and handsome man about town.  As an adult, magic seems to appear when you least expect it and most need it.  My magic usually manifested itself when I was able to lay my hands on a report that everyone was telling me didn't exist and if it did exist, it would just show me exactly what they already knew, but actually (magically) did exist and supported what I had been saying for a week. Sometimes, the magic hid in my closets, where I was able to lay my hands on precisely what I needed to help one of my daughters complete a project that was assigned two weeks before and she just remembered it was due the next day.

Now, in my 60's, I have found a totally new magic.  This magic is based in reality, the rarest of all magics.  It is the magic of a memory, triggered by a sound, a sight or a smell.  This magic instantly transports me through time and space and I am bombarded with images flashing on the I-Max theater screen in my brain, complete with Surround Sound. One whiff of a lilac bush and I am standing on my grandmother's back porch, with the sun flickering in my eyes, the summer breeze tickling my bangs and the smell of grass, old wood and . . .  lilacs, luscious lilacs, filling my nostrils.  I am able to relive, with just as much enthusiasm as I had when I was six, a  sense that it was, and is right to be alive and happy.

Not all magic is happy magic, but all magic is right magic.  Sometimes, a turn of a phrase or reference to a family event reminds me of those who have disappeared into the magic of death.  But, even this magic is O.K. This magic gives me strength, it shows me that I can endure, it reassures me the world just keeps spinning.  As I  go on in this adventure of aging, of exploring the world, of meeting new people, of trying different ways of living, I will rely on magic, all kinds of magic.

RR