Estimated read time: 4 minutes
Several years ago in California, I was eating pizza with a group of friends who often made me feel small and simple-minded. We had just watched an episode of the TV show ‘Nathan For You’ in which Nathan creates the job title ‘Ghost Realtor’, in the hopes that people will be more inclined to buy a house if they can be guaranteed it is ghost-free. I sat in silence while my friends enjoyed the episode, laughing at the absurdity of believing in ghosts. They were all in agreement that ghosts could not exist on any level, in any realm.
“How can anyone be so stupid?” one of them said, commenting on the couple in the episode who are so relieved to find a home that is ghost-free due to their past experiences being haunted.
Unfortunately, the topic persisted into dinner, where they continued to bash individuals who believe that after death, one’s soul can return to Earth and revisit buildings and landmarks they frequented when alive. I tried to laugh along politely so that they didn’t realize that I, of course, believe in ghosts.
I wanted to melt into the walls and disappear when they moved on to insult the intelligence of individuals who believe in mermaids, unicorns, and even the Loch Ness monster. While I admittedly do not know much about the Loch Ness “monster”, I have spent my entire life believing firmly in mermaids and unicorns. Why wouldn’t I?
I excused myself to the bathroom to find one of my favorite quotes from the movie ‘Boyhood’ on my phone to calm my nerves.
Mason : Dad, there's no real magic in the world, right?
Dad : What do you mean?
Mason : You know, like elves and stuff. People just made that up.
Dad : Oh, I don't know. I mean, what makes you think that elves are any more magical than something like a whale? Yoy know what I mean? What if I told you a story about how underneath the ocean, there was this giant sea mammal that used sonar and sang songs and it was so big that its heart was the size of a car and you could crawl through the arteries? I mean, you'd think that was pretty magical, right?
Did you know only 5% of the ocean has been explored by humans? How can anyone definitively say something does not exist when the world’s top researchers and scientists have not discovered each corner and crevice? How can you defy an individual’s story in which they recount how they felt their grandmother’s spirit tap them on the shoulder in their childhood home, right in the exact spot where she always used to sit and smoke her cigar?
I can understand not believing in something. I, for one, am a little skeptical about the Easter Bunny. But thinking less of someone’s intelligence for believing in something as sublime and incredible as a mermaid? That is something I cannot wrap my head around.
Often at night, Craig performs reiki on me to help with my body’s aches and pains. It is clear that my husband is a healer, and I feel the force of his energy wash through me like a gentle rainstorm. (Side bar: I am so lucky, and I cannot recommend his reiki enough.)
Twice now while Craig is doing reiki on me in our sunroom, I have closed my eyes and entered a world where I am a mermaid. Not a mermaid like Ariel, but a green, scaly mermaid with slimy skin and jet-black eyes basking in the dark depths of the ocean. It’s so dark that I cannot see in front of me or behind me, but I soar ahead - unscathed and unafraid. For a brief moment, I am light, free of the various ways stress has made a home for itself in the joints of my body.
When I’m a mermaid, I am calm, I am quiet, I am content. Thank you, Craig, for taking me to this portal where I experience a nook of the sea that most people will never visit. I think I can enter this portal because I do believe. I expect that my brain has spent so much time reading about trolls and giants and wizards, that it’s easy for me to close my eyes and see them right there. They are magical, and they are real. I believe you can be both.
One of the things I’m most excited for in Ollie’s childhood is reading fantasy books aloud to him, just as my Dad did for me. We will read The Hobbit, Redwall, Hunger Games, The Chronicles of Narnia, to infinity and beyond. When the questions of real and make-believe arise, I’ll take a page out of the book of Ethan Hawke in ‘Boyhood' : There’s magic all around us. Why do we choose to believe only in the magic that is well-documented and researched? If anything, isn’t the magic more magnificent and exciting when there’s mystery wrapped around it?
When I die, I’ll float above you just long enough to tuck a dandelion behind your ear, just to remind you. Believe.
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
This made me emotional! There's so much we don't know and I magic is all around us :)
you better also read him harry potter !