Growing Up

I am always amazed at the constancy of the real world and by real, I mean that base where the laws of nature take over and everything else is fog on the mountain.

I remember accompanying my Dad to his lab at school and being given some bar magnets to play with. North was so drawn to South that I could barely keep them apart. Likewise North was so repelled by his twin that the possibilities for playing with them were endless. (Hey, I was a little girl, all things were fed, washed and put to bed!)

Everything I dropped fell down. No matter how poetic I waxed, nothing in my world ever fell up.

I understood, at three, concepts some people never grasp. Then we got this thing called television with tiny people in it that my parents wouldn’t let me play with and I went to a thing called a movie where a whale as big as a house swallowed a talking wooden boy and he lived in there, building fires and everything!

My grandfather died. I heard about divorce and my world was shaken. No longer safe and secure in the happily ever after world where I squished in between my parents while they were kissing, I realized that life could take some nasty turns.

So I turned back to the magic I hoped could forestall all these things -- only to discover it couldn’t.