I think one of the most troublesome things about getting older is that reality becomes much clearer. It’s almost impossible to be hopeful about difficult situations when you get a few years under your belt and know the reality of things. Even harder when you reach an age where you start to lose friends and you face some of life’s obstacles and challenges.
I can recall as a child how many things I heard and believed that were completely magical and I never thought to challenge them. One of my favourites being the story my father used to tell us about a lake in our home town that to the eye always appears to be completely split in two; one side being blue and one side being green. My father would tell us that the reason for this was that there was a king and a young shepherd girl who loved one another but because of their status could never be together. She had blue eyes, his were green and they each cried enough tears for one another to create a lake. But the colours, just like them, would never blend together. Now that I’m a grown up and I know that the real reason is because of shadows and the perspective from where you see the lake. I still love to tell the story to my children who believe it and believe in the magical message. Being a parent gives us an opportunity to believe in magic, even if only through our children’s perspective.
We recently had to have our beloved family dog, Jaymi, put to sleep. It was a difficult transition for my eldest who had received the dog as a gift on his 5th birthday. But my youngest didn’t take it too hard; he took it less like the loss of his pet but more like Jaymi was just going on to the next chapter in his life. He came home from school and announced that a “very smart” boy in his class had told him that when a pet dies all the strongest ants in the ant kingdom came and got their body and take the pet to the queen ant that magically brings the pet back to life. So although it was hard to come up with a tale to spin on this, I told him that his little friend was right and that the ants took the pet to heaven where the queen ant there brought him back and he got to become the pet of a special boy or girl who was waiting in heaven for a new pet of their own.
I miss believing in magic and being hopeful that all situations work themselves out so that they are all perfectly resolved. A lot happens in our lives, good and bad. But I’m making it a goal for myself to start to believe more often in the possibility of a happy ending than in feeling hopeless when situations feel difficult. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to build a pretty good life for myself and for the boys and I honestly believe that if the message I put out into the universe is that I believe in the possibility of magic and happily ever after’s that I’ll have my very own happily ever after. You get what you put out and I’m putting out the belief that I’m on path and I have the confidence to succeed in all that I envision coming true for me and the boys.
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