What?!! Magic??!!! That’s stupid, it can’t be real. Your parents told you that the first time you thought it a great idea to grab the dusty old broom out of the corner closet and pretend to be the wicked witch of the west. You of course fell down when you jumped off the dining room table, breaking a rare piece of valuable china, not to mention a smarting bruise on your knee.
“I’m sorry momma,” you said as the symbolic figure of right and wrong inched toward you, painful decision making splayed on her face. “I didn’t mean to,” the words so commonly echoed through the mind of your younger self in hopes that any approaching pain could be sidestepped or parryed. She crouched down next to her child - the one she was was charged to nurture and protect - and slowly pushed the pieces of the splintered broom handle to the side.
You muttered a phrase that to anyone under the age of five made complete sense. “I was just trying to fly, the broom was magic.” Realization hit that your eyes were nurturing a few embarassed droplets. Your mother’s hinted at understanding for a choice familiar and heartwarming. Her baby wanted to fly.
“(Insert motherly nickname).” Her choice had been made, you saw it in her face. You were safe, no pain. If only. “Darling, come here,” she lovingly said before scooping up the small frame of a five year old and depositing it’s rump into her lap. You had no idea of the nuking you were about to recieve. So many dreams fed into the smoke of a mushroom cloud, radioactive air lending bouyancy before mutating them into a rental lease and a German car.
Your mother spoke with love but the words were like daggers to a kid who saw the Wizard of Oz for the first time and truly believed anything was possible. Scarecrows can talk, tin cans can love, lions can walk on two legs, and witches can fly. “Magic isn’t real.”
End Childhood
