In childhood, every niche and movement is magical because we see with different eyes, eyes that have not become dull. All the clouds are stories, rolling into each other, waiting for you to listen. They do not hide. They are unseen too often. There are big ships, dragons, and castles floating across the sky. There are angels in sunsets. And great adventures in gardens. It is a wonder parents see anything at all—because they do not see the wondrous things. If you tell them, they ruin everything. They are the terse movements of bills, chores, and scuffed-dull practicality. And they presume to understand happy, though parents rarely see the world when you are not bringing them the crayon-instructions as to how to live better.
My daddy and I used to know how things really were. We would go to plays and talk at museums. And he would seed dreams. Afterward, I could see bigger. He would poke at tide pools and find broken birds eggs and little things that let me know he knew secrets in stories, fossils, rocks and volcanos no one had seen for millions of years. He knew about dinosaurs and faraway lands. Those were his secrets, unseen all too often.
“I love you more,” he would say when he was home.
“No! You can’t love me more.” I would say. And I knew I was right because he would laugh big.
“I have bigger arms and I love you this much.” He would put his arms out wide and he was the tallest man in the world. And I would giggle back.
“I love you more because you’re daddy and ice cream and…” all the things that make sense to little hearts. I would prove myself right with drawings and notes and the way daddy’s face would change only for me when we were together, when parents did not seem so sad. Love cleared a space of secrets and confessions where all the ghosts and time went away. Everything was endless. It was memories of picking blackberries and finding arrowheads where dad grew up. It was the endless forage for discoveries and things that were magical before grownups yell things like, “Put this junk away” and “It’s time for bed.”
There was a set of wood steps in the ivy of our first California house, just above where my daddy would make leaf piles (twice because we would jump in them). They were wooden and everyone should have seen them. The steps went straight up to the wood fence edging the backyard. They were magical because all steps lead to doors, even though I never found this particular door. It was hidden, though there was no evidence it was clear. “Why would there be stairs to nowhere?” When my cousin came to live with us, she was the only one who I told. We searched under leaves and in the mud full of worms. Then we moved. I never saw the creatures who hid shyly in the shadows beneath beds and in trees, the ones who startled the birds off branches and drank all the morning-water off the flowers. The fairies, goblins and funny monsters were too scared to come out or be seen in a world of people who could not see them. So, the monsters hid behind chairs and colored alone, just like me.
There are lessons (if you pay attention) in the secret world. We become conscientious making sure stuffed animals are in the right place—not next to some bear they don’t get along with or stuck in an uncomfortable position—when we leave them. Because everyone knows that they cannot move when we are watching. We could become brave battling the shadows where the AT-ATs made a gauntlet leading up to the parents’ bed.
It would be a lot of time before I realized that people had decorative stairs and inhibition was good behavior. Things were very important then—the mushrooms that grew in the broken down gazebo at preschool, the thoughts of rollie pollies, conversations with kittens, the epic battlegrounds for heroes and Barbie dolls. When everything was a secret, we could see things without interruption. We could dream without should. In the world before little scratches and dresses that cannot get dirty stop the possibility. When mud was marmalade and a paper cup could learn to sail across great puddle oceans.
Pneumatic Devotion 