Do you remember how magical your childhood felt at times?? I do. I can remember the excitement of the first day of the school year and all its possibilities. I can remember thinking that Santa was amazingly strong to carry all those gifts around the world. I can remember the warmth of a beach trip and thinking that the coast was always bright and filled with great restaurants (I LOVE other people cooking me food). I can remember watching movies late at night or tickle fights with my sister. I vividly remember drama summer camp (because I was a theater geek and it was heaven to me). I remember all the little details that made my life possible.
Childhood is filled with magic. It cannot exist in any other form. Every day is exciting and new and is an adventure and is warm and bright and full of the crazy impossible. I don't know exactly where it comes from but it's best witnessed when an 18 month old wakes from a glorious long nap and jumps up excitedly (with damp head curls and droopy eyes) to see what magic is happening outside her bedroom door. It's as if the entire universe has been flipping over and reinventing itself during her slumber and she absolutely must see the transformation immediately. (In actuality, her 2 hour nap consisted of a load of laundry, a perusing of Facebook and 40 rounds of Candy Land with a 4 year old who must ALWAYS win). As a child- life, in all it's reincarnations, is absolutely possible.
Then comes puberty and young adulthood. It's where you learn about bullying and death and mean girls and belly fat that actually matters to other people, and heart break and self conscious nerves and failing at important things and disappointment and insecurity and all the ugly truths about being human. Sadly, to be human means feeling all these things on every level of who you are. I remember being asked out by a 'popular boy' in middle school and discovering it was a 7th grade prank. I remember not being cast in the role I so badly coveted. I remember not being liked by the boy I had a crush on (many times). I remember worrying about the belly fat I couldn't seem to get rid of. I remember being ridiculed by a teacher for not being a good enough singer. I remember all those details of being human....of being not quite myself....of being not quite whatever it was I was supposed to be.
Then comes adulthood. Beautiful, sweet, well-deserved adulthood. Adulthood with its adult bills, cars with flat tires that Daddy doesn't come to fix, adult family decisions about moving where my opinion is actually the important one, dinner decided and cooked by me, adults dealing with small children, adults trying to get a good nights' sleep, plumbing explosions handled...by me, adults trying to make all the puzzle pieces they have picked up along life's journey fit together. After everything I've been through (both boring and a little extraordinary), I've realized that I just want my kids to enjoy their childhood for as long as is absolutely possible. Later on, I want them to realize what I have recently realized: that the magic of their childhood will be created by the people in their life who love them the most. Above all the bullying or stressful situations or awkward belly fat or bad acne or bad life choices, the people in their life who love the essence of their soul will be the key to the magic of life. It's kind of cool to realize that magic totally exists....in the space between you and the people you love. It would be great if we could all get away from laundry and paying bills and walking the dog long enough to work on that magic just a little bit. But-either way-- I will do my very best to give my kids a magical childhood that will empower them to get through the terribly awkward young adulthood years that we all must suffer through so they will have a story to tell when they are older.........
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