I Believe In Magic

When I look back on my childhood I have mostly sunny memories that glisten and sparkle in my mind's eye. I had iconic summer moments sitting in the sunshine eating popsicles.  I think I had a pretty magical childhood.  I never doubted that the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause, and the Tooth Fairy were real.  I played with my siblings wonderful games of make believe.   
Now that I have children I want to preserve that magic.  I know not every parent agrees with the whole Santa and Easter Bunny thing, and I can appreciate them wanting to be completely honest with their children.  But what if you could do both? 
I'd like to think I haven't lied to my kids.  When they ask me questions about Santa or the Tooth Fairy, or any other magical person I typically ask them what they think.  Lately my older daughter has been asking a lot about real magic.  After a play date with our neighbor where they were playing with plastic wands purchased at the store my daughter asked if we could make our own real magic wands.  She was pretty insistent and I thought it would be a fun project for us to do together.  I dug out some old hair chopsticks that I've had since high school and we made some wands.  We even drilled a small hole in the back so we could fill it with glitter, giving the wand its ability to do magic.  The wands turned out pretty cute and both my girls were thrilled to have their own real magic wands.  After a few minutes of playing my older daughter came up to me and said that she didn't think her wand was working or that she didn't know how to make it do real magic.  I sat down with her and we talked about what we both thought real magic really was.  In the end I told her that I believe real magic is made in our imaginations because when we imagine or play make believe we can create anything, we can be anything, we can see and hear what ever we want, and when we practice enough we can feel anything we can imagine. I reassured her that with practice using her imagination she would be able to do all sorts of magic.



I don't believe I was lying to my child, then or now, when I tell her I believe in magic and that magic is real.  As writers we are creators of magic.  We create worlds and people that don't exists in our every day lives.  We create something out of nothing.  We can take that nothing and with our magic we can make it become anything.  Magic lives in our imaginations and we have the incredible opportunity to share that with the world. 

Go ahead and believe in magic.  I do.