Magical thinking when you most need it

When we water the garden of our imagination, all kinds of things can bloom: hope, magic, secrets, forgiveness and worlds we wish to conjure out of thin air.

Dear friends,

When you read this essay I will be enjoying my first days as a resident of beautiful Barcelona. I can’t wait to share this new chapter in life with all of you as it unfolds into its bloom. But for today, I am taking inspiration from Living in 3D subscriber

Fran Gardner

, a retired newspaperwoman living in Portland, Oregon who writes

Becoming

in which she “explores fresh worlds, discovering new ideas wrapped in the scented papyrus of the Universe.” I love how she drops often wildly different ideas into her essays, skipping lightly among topics and observations about life, in the hope that it will “send sparks into unexpected dimensions.”

So today’s essay from me is likewise a sprinkling of ideas, dreams, and desires that emerged from the New Year Journaling Challenge with the community of

The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad

. For the first week of the year, we let our creativity roam through tantalizing prompts, which you can find here. The fertile soil of these prompts are doing their work, sowing seeds that will show their buds in time. The following “essayettes” (as Ross Gay calls his short pieces in The Book of Delights) roam from past to present to future—which makes perfect sense when one is perched at an important threshold.

I am ready to leap.

Do you believe in magic?

So first, let’s talk about magic. What are the people, places and things that make you believe in magic? The miracles in plain sight? (Our jumping off point was the poem “Belief in Magic” by Dean Young). Here’s where I wandered, knitting together images of the beach town of Venice, Florida where I’ve spent the past decade:

Believe in magic—how could I not?

The heart shape of shells on the sand, my bare feet made to stop. Hello, Mom, I see what you did there.

The child who puts her palm in mine, ready to hear the secret I have to share. Listen. It’s a whisper we can both hear.

The man in top hat and tails dancing on the beach. Elegiac elegance. Arms raised to the sky and the sea.

The man bicycling with a cart in front, festooned with colorful flags, his tiny dog sitting like a prince, surveying his kingdom.

Streaks of pink across the sky, the cool morning air. Blessings for another day.

Thousands of miles between us, a friend pulls a tarot card for me: Spirit keeper of the north. We close our eyes. Presence, she tells me. Connection. Magic lands like a feather in my lap.

Take time for contemplation. Turn within. Connect with your ancestors. Incubate ideas. Mend relationships. Watch your dreams.

A Room of Her Own: Where does my inner life reside?

Imagine the walled-off room where your inner life stays protected. What does it look like? What is contained inside? Describe it in detail—from the color of the walls to the scent of the air. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own has long inspired me, since I first read it in college. I liked the challenge of imagining such a room for my inner life:

The walls are white so I can write on them, invisible ink only I can see, burned into my mind’s eye and then erased, so I can start fresh again, like new snow blanketing the field.

The field of my imagination. I hold all the power. I can change the seasons of my room with a flick of my fingers. Now it is spring outside the window, pink and red begonias are spilling from flower boxes, leaving petals on the wood floor, caught in a ray of sunshine.

There is a blue ceramic mug in my hand with hot green tea, small bits of toasted rice carry the scent of crowded markets and countries I’ve never been but I can imagine.

Photo by Wafeah Islam Rutbah on Unsplash

In the room of my imagination, all worlds are possible. All of possibility becomes my world.

There is a pumpkin orange cushion in a seated nook below the largest window with built-in bookshelves. When I tire of my own word conjuring, I step into another’s imagination and get lost there. The poets greet me with their enlivening verse. They make me want to spring back into action, return to my desk and notebook and pen, in this quiet sanctum where nothing and no one gains entry without my permission.

Softly, softly, imagination and I hold hands and discover what there is to discover.

The secret that haunts me

Now, write about something you’ve been carrying inside of yourself that no one knows about. A fear, a hope, a dream, a memory? Write it from this place we’ve created, this place of calm.

With this prompt, the day my mother died came immediately to mind. I’ve been harboring pain about that day, for all kinds of reasons, naturally. But this prompt helped unearth my shame so I could begin to let go of it.

The day I tried to say goodbye to you your eyes kept closing as I read to you about little Bert getting lost and forgotten in the darkness of the empty night-time department store. The Bobbsey Twins. Your childhood favorite. A stray cat, the only apparent nightwatchman, comforts Bert as he waits for rescue. “Don’t be scared of the dark,” I whispered to you. “Pablo is there.” Pablo Picasso Brown, your beloved cat, now over the rainbow bridge, awaiting you. I lean close to your pale face, your damp brow, so you hear every word. All is peaceful. Your breathing eases, and you squeeze my hand.

Then they come in. The two med techs. I watch in horror as they lift you roughly, turn your poor thin body, all jutting bones and sagging skin, to change your diaper. You cry out in pain, a howling. I cannot look. I cannot bear it, for you, for me. I want to tell you how sorry I am. But I wasn’t sorry enough to stop them, was I, to take over the tender care of your body. I was trying to bear witness. Because I believed that bearing witness was enough. Now I know. I should have borne your weight in my arms instead and cradled you, not them, not those strangers. I should have been the one to ease you into that long good night. Mother, can you forgive me?

“I think of you when….”

Happily, our next prompt was the medicine I needed: Think of someone you know well. Maybe it’s someone you love, someone you miss, or someone you’ll never see again. Fill a page with all the things that remind you of them beginning each line with, “I think of you when...”

It became a letter to my mother:

I think of you when I read a book—any book, but especially these two books: You reading Curious George to me as I sat in your lap, four years old, my huge stuffed monkey dangling from my hand, entranced by the the man with the yellow hat and George (of course, also the name of my monkey).

My love of books started early on my mother’s lap, my maternal grandparents approving.

Me reading to you The Bobbsey Twins in the last hours of your life, sixty years later, as Bert gets lost in the night-time darkness of the department store. I tell you not to be afraid of the dark. I am here.

I think of you when my elementary school stuttering was the misery and shame of my existence. One day after school I was bursting with news to tell you, each syllable a torture. I begged you to allow me to write it down. “Amy,” you said, sitting next to me at the kitchen table. “I have all the time in the world. Tell me in your own words.”

I think of you when you send me signs. You know what I mean. The yellow butterfly that fluttered around my face two days after you died, when I was crying, walking around the pond. I had never once seen a yellow butterfly there before. “Thank you, Mom,” I whispered. The shells formed into a heart shape that I walked past on the beach the other day. The way the word “Mommy,” once a cry of despair, is now my prayer.

I think of you when I take a risk of any kind, remembering all the ways you encouraged me, especially my writing.

Every word I write, I write for you.

I think of you when I remember the power of words and the power of love—one and the same, for us.

My manifesto of hope

My wiser, more tender self had this to share one day in early January:

Hope has always been with me, even in my darkest days. On those days, she hides in the shadows. But most often she's in the light, beckoning me forward. She offers her hand and I grasp it, firmly, gratefully. When I made the most wrenching decision of my life to end my long marriage two years ago, she was there, holding out a bouquet of hopeful promise that better days were ahead. When after two years of caring for her in my home, my mother succumbed to the dementia that had stolen so much before it finally claimed her life, hope was a little more reticent, a little shyer, a little harder to find, but she was there all the same, ready to hold me when I was ready. And now, ten months after I held my mother's hand for the last time and told her I loved her, hope has taken up residence in my heart, where she rightfully belongs. She is inviting me to follow her to Barcelona, to join my daughter and partner in their vibrant life there. I do not think I will lose hope as easily now. She won't let me, I suspect. She and I will keep despair outside the door of my soul. There is simply too much to discover and no time to waste.

Swedish strawberries on a summer day

Use your words to conjure worlds—things you love, things you’ve lost, things that have not yet been imagined. If you’d like, begin with, “I think _______ & there is.”

I think hunger & there is a table beneath a birch tree on a Swedish summer day laden with baskets of strawberries, ripe from the summer field.

I think love & there are my daughters, sitting in the grass beneath the tree, red-stained fingers as they plop strawberries into their berry mouths.

I think family & there are three generations of strong Swedish women, setting out homemade rhubarb pie, buttery pound cake and thermoses of strong coffee. Mothers and daughters and granddaughters and a grateful daughter- and sister-in-love.

I think mother & there is an empty space where I used to rest my head against a soft shoulder and familiar fingers stroking my hair.

I think father & there he sits in his worn corner of the couch, crossword puzzle in his hands, half-watching a football game, barely raising his head to astonish us all with a perfectly timed sardonic joke.

I think husband & there is an empty space in my bed, my own choosing but a loss just the same.

I think little girl & teenager & young woman & young mother & empty nester & middle-aged woman & elder and I see all the women I’ve ever been. Lost and found, again and again.

I think worlds of my imagination & I conjure places with no hurt, war, violence, cruelty, prejudice, hatred, greed.

I think world as it should be & I am back in the Swedish field of poppies and lavender, my fingers wrapped around a perfectly ripe strawberry.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN! LET’S CHAT! Below in the comments, please share:

What’s felt like magic to you so far this year? I know many of us are looking for it, so where are you finding magic in plain sight?

Is there a secret you’ve been carrying inside you, that haunts you? This is a safe place to share.

Thanks to all the readers who became paid subscribers during my January special offer. You’ll soon receive an invitation to our monthly zoom call, the FIRST TUESDAY of every month at 9am PST/12pm EST and 6pm CET, starting February 4, live from Barcelona! We’ll talk for about 30-45 minutes about the topic of that week’s Living in 3D post or whatever has bubbled up for you based on other topics in the weekly essays. Let’s make new friends, share ideas and resources and offer each other a sounding board.

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