Reclaiming Magic
During the few weeks that we spent in Ireland, the garden has sprung to life. Great clusters of daisies fall over burgeoning cosmos. Round, green tomatoes cling to strong stems. Potato vines vie for sunshine against large leaves of trailing summer squash.
Before I left for our holiday, I spent an afternoon trimming the ever-blooming lilac bush that grows outside of the kitchen window. As my grandmother Mim would say, ‘They grew a foot in a day,” and despite my earlier efforts, all I could see was the alien height of the lilacs and a small yellow spider spinning her web.
As I watched the spider weave her orb between fresh petals of lilac and those that have faded into the branches, curled brown, I was reminded of a similar scene twenty-six years ago.
The summer that I was pregnant with my son, my daughter had only just turned one. Since she was born, I had read to her books about animals, plants, all the wonders of nature.
Busy and precocious, my daughter viewed the world through wide eyes and a curious spirit. When she had trouble settling for naps or bedtimes, I would run the faucet so that she could hear the steady stream of a waterfall.
During hot summer nights, I would hold my daughter softly while a crescendo of crickets and the hushed sounds of nightbirds lulled her to sleep.
One humid afternoon, the hot sky burst with a sudden rainstorm. Sheltered by our porch, my daughter and I sat on the steps of our old house. The rain was falling from dark skies. Undeterred by the storm or our presence, a spider wove her web.
Katie and I sat in quiet company while the spider toiled, and raindrops, summer-big, fell from the sky. When the clouds were spent, the rain cleared, sun shone, and the expected rainbow bloomed over our neighborhood.
Unconcerned with the atmosphere, the spider continued to weave. Delicate pearls of water clung to the silk of her web, while the sun burned the magic out of the sky.
I have always sought truth through the elements of nature. The soil grounds us to the earth and produces sustenance. Birds and beasts mark time as the seasons change. Water soothes the racing mind.
No matter our worries or disappointments, the earth continues to rotate and each day dawns new. There are times, however, that we lose sight of this truth.
A few weeks before our departure for Ireland, I received word that I had been denied admittance to a writing program. The conference is one of the top in our country, so I knew that my chances were slim, but still I held on to my belief in magic. Despite the reality of percentages and competition, I thought that the conference would be part of my journey.
When I was a girl, my father taught me the art of observation. How to look at the stars, how to understand the power of words, how to be present in the magic of a moment.
After Dad died, I encountered a series of events that led me to apply for a place among this select group of writers and academics. I wanted to learn more about my craft.
The reality of rejection upended my belief in the magic of the universe. The hope that my father was somehow puppeteering my admittance to the conference. That I would live out our shared dream of writing in the woods of Vermont.
My writing does not stem from a place of logic. It grows from my intuitive sense of the wisdom that emanates from our natural world. A place that has always held enchantment.
I left for Ireland hoping to reclaim a bit of the magic that I lost to reality. When I arrived in Ireland, Uncle Paddy asked, “Has this country changed any?”
I replied, “Blessedly, no,” But there were changes, subtle, beautiful changes around every bend in the hedgerows that lined my daily walks.
In June, wild yellow iris sprouted among thick nettles. Bright stalks of foxglove and lupine rose from weathered stone walls. Over the course of two weeks, young ivory blooms opened on thorny blackberry brambles.
The lambs greeted me each day with knowing glances. Magpies darted over hawthorn trees, while the skies turned grey, and sunshine turned to rain. Slowly, I began to reclaim my belief in the healing power of nature.
The weather in the West of Ireland is unpredictable. North Atlantic winds blew a steady cover of grey clouds and rain over most of our days.
Undeterred, we decided to sauna on the strand at Mulranny. The tide was high and winds blew, but together, as a family, we sat in the sauna, inhaling the heat of cedar wood and steam.
The time came to cool off in the chill of the Atlantic waters. With careful feet, I sat on the stones and drew sharp breaths as the cold water splashed over my body.
I had never felt so alive. My heart settled and I knew that my belief in magic had returned.
It was only a few days later that I remembered my father’s death day, June 29, had passed. I hadn’t thought about him or that dark night when the rain and wind howled over Crooked Lake. I forgot because I was feeling what it meant to be alive in the damp heat of the sauna, in the cold of the Atlantic, enjoying the laughter of our family as we braved the sauna on that Irish summer day.
When I finally remembered his anniversary, I wept for my neglect of his memory, but then I realized that he remembered me. Somehow, Dad led me safely to the wild beauty of rain and wind and the company of my family, a baptism of sort, a realization that to experience magic, to know joy, we must feel the pain of loss.
