I’m on deadline, which means I don’t have time to write my blog…at least not until later this week. So I offer you a little something that always brightens my day…

A Short Story

Cindy was starting to get breasts, there was no doubt about that. And it was about time. Most of her friends had started to develop in the sixth or seventh grade. Everyone in her gym class wore a bra. Actually, she did too, but she didn’t need one. The polyester triangles of fabric puckered pathetically under her cotton T-shirts. But now, the pink circle around her nipples was widening to the size of a quarter and protruding just enough to stretch the fabric of her training bra so it was tight and smooth across her chest.

As Cindy stood naked in front of the mirror, she said three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys, asking God to make her breasts full and round, like Jennifer Hamm’s. She also prayed that she would start her period before the school year ended in exactly one month. She was certain that she was the only girl in the eighth grade who hadn’t started yet. Not that she wasn’t prepared. For the last two years, she had carried a tampon wrapped in tin foil and tucked inside a box of pens to keep it hidden from the boys who routinely stole her purse in math class. Of course, Cindy wasn’t sure if she would even know how to use a tampon when the time came. She thought about carrying around the directions, but they wouldn’t fit in the pen box and anywhere else would have been too great a risk.

Cindy looked long and hard at herself in the mirror—at her square hips, flat butt, and round, pot-bellied stomach. She didn’t look a thing like the girls in Seventeen magazine or the copies of Playboy her friend’s father kept in his garage. And even if she had a nice body, her hair was enough to scare anyone away. In an attempt to look like Jennifer Hamm, who had long, blond hair with soft, loose curls cascading down her back, Cindy got a perm. It turned out that her hair was too short and the perm was too tight, so she looked like a brunette Orphan Annie. Braces filled her big mouth. Cindy tried smiling with her mouth closed, but the braces just made her lips stick out funny.

She turned to the side and looked at her profile. She sucked in her stomach as far as it would go. She said the Apostle’s Creed and asked God to make her stomach flat. When she finished, she looked at the clock. She had only five minutes before she needed to meet Robin to go to the pool. She quickly slipped on her swimsuit and looked at herself one last time in the mirror. The suit did little to hide her inadequacies. She thought for a moment of not going—of calling Robin and making up some excuse. But she knew Robin would know the real reason and tell Cindy she was being stupid. Of course, it was easier for Robin; she had her period and small, perky boobs.

—-

Cindy rode her bike to the corner where Robin was waiting for her, wearing her bathing suit and flip-flops, with a towel draped over her neck, just like Cindy. They pedaled fast to the neighborhood swimming pool. It was the end of May but already hot and humid, as it was most days in southeast Texas. They rode fast past the big houses with their broad green lawns and heard the splash and calls of swimming children in the backyards. The trees that lined the street sagged under the burden of Spanish moss that hung from their branches and cut the yellow afternoon light like fingers.

Cindy stood in the pedals and pumped her legs harder. She loved the feel of the wind in her hair. She loved the whirring sound of the tires on asphalt. She loved the dryness that crept into the back of her throat and the sweat on the back of her neck under her hair. She sat back in the seat and leaned forward, pedaling faster after Robin, who led the way.

At the pool, Cindy and Robin staked out a spot on the grass far from the water’s edge and laid on their backs in the sun. After about twenty minutes, Randy Olson, Pete Waters, and John Meeks—the most popular boys in the eighth grade—walked into the gate and ran to the high-dive. Cindy couldn’t believe it. There were no popular girls there. In fact, there were no eighth-grade girls at all, except for Misty Marsh, who was a total dork and there was no way they were going to pay any attention to her. Cindy thought now was her chance for them to notice her. Randy was in her history class, so he knew who she was, but he never talked to her. Sometimes she wondered if she was invisible.

Cindy turned to Robin. They covered their mouths and giggled.

“Let’s go off the high dive!” Cindy jumped up off the grass.

“Are you kidding?” Robin grabbed Cindy’s ankle. “They’re going to know we’re going over there to see them. And besides, do you really want them to see you in a bathing suit?”

Cindy looked down at herself and saw her pathetic little girl breasts and her round stomach and wondered what she was thinking. She wished she had brought her T-shirt, then she could have put that on over her swimsuit. She grabbed her towel and tied it around her waist, and then sat back on the grass with Robin and watched as the boys did cannonballs and jack-knifes off the high-dive. Cindy imagined having a beautiful body and no braces and wearing a bikini. She imagined walking by and hearing them say, “Is that Cindy Singer? Wow!”

After watching the boys for a half-hour, Robin suggested they leave. “Your legs aren’t going to tan with that towel wrapped around your waist anyway. Let’s go to the Stop-n-Go and get some Jolly Ranchers.” They put on their flip-flops and stood up, brushing off the backs of their calves that were thatched with the imprint of the grass.

As they walked towards the exit, they noticed Randy, Pete, and John following behind them—not directly behind them, but close enough. Cindy’s heartbeat quickened. She wondered if they were coming to talk to them. She licked her lips so they would be shiny and pulled the curls of her bangs individually to try to straighten them. She prepared to turn around and smile. All of a sudden, the boys burst into a cackling laughter. She wondered if she should turn around. Were they laughing at her? Maybe they were just trying to get her attention. She looked over her shoulder casually. They were looking at her, so she smiled.

“Hey, Singer,” Randy said, still laughing and pointing at her, “you’re not supposed to go swimming when you’re on the rag.” Cindy laughed with them, not sure what they were talking about. Just then, Robin grabbed Cindy by the arm and pulled her into the bathroom next to the exit.

“Oh-my-god, Cindy!” Robin’s look was horrified. “You started!”

“What?” Cindy laughed nervously, trying to make sense of all that had happened–and was happening still–too fast–like someone had pressed the fast-forward button.

Robin pulled the towel from around Cindy’s waist and there, on the back of it, right in the middle where Randy, Pete, and John could plainly see, was a spot of blood the size of a margarine cup. Cindy couldn’t say anything. She just stared at the perfectly round blood stain and burst into tears. All of her planning, all of her preparation, all those years of carrying a tampon in a box of pens, and this had to happen. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to die. “Get in there,” Robin spun Cindy around and shoved her toward a stall. “Go in there and take off your suit.”

Cindy collapsed onto the toilet and began sobbing, deep and full. “I can’t believe they saw. I can’t believe they saw,” she said over and over again. She buried her head in her hands, hoping it could hide her, make her disappear.

“Just give me the suit.”

Cindy handed the suit under the stall door to Robin. As Robin ran the suit and towel under the faucet, scrubbing them together to get out the blood as she had done to her own clothes a number of times, Cindy sat shivering on the toilet, replaying the events in her head. She thought of going to school on Monday; everyone would be talking about it. Her sobbing grew even more violent.

“Here,” Robin handed the suit and soaking towel back under the door and then dropped a quarter in the sanitary napkin dispenser. Robin handed her a pad. “Put this in your bathing suit and tie the towel around your waist.”

Cindy did as she was told, unquestioning. The pad was stiff and bulky. It rubbed her inner thighs. She emerged from the stall, her face blotchy from crying. Robin stood outside the stall door, smiling, “Well, at least you started your period!”

Cindy laughed and started to cry again at the same time. She slapped Robin on the arm. “Shut up!”

“Let’s get out of here. You can come to my house. It’s closer. And you can borrow some of my clothes to go home.” Robin turned to walk out of the bathroom.

“Robin!” Cindy grabbed her arm. “They could still be out there!”

Robin peaked her head around the corner of the bathroom door. “They’re here, but they’re at the high-dive. They won’t see you.”

They rushed out the gate, looking over their shoulders to make sure the boys weren’t watching, and unlocked their bikes chained like prisoners to the rack. Cindy swung her leg over the narrow seat and sat down. The bulk of the pad and the wet towel were uncomfortable. They pedaled slowly to Robin’s house, stopping every few blocks so Cindy could adjust the towel or, more discreetly, the pad, which was causing small welts on the inside of her thighs. As they made their way slowly to the house, Cindy remembered the ride to the pool just a few short hours before. When the wind made her throat dry. When the sweat ran down the back of her neck. When she could pedal as fast as she wanted.

I’ve had it. I’m actually surprised I made it this long—that I was able to endure the seemingly endless days that bled into one another like some sort of Jean-Jacques Rousseau film. (Okay, in truth, I’ve never watched a Rousseau film. I actually have no idea who he is. I googled “French absurdist filmmakers” and his was the first name that popped up…although he’s really Belgian. But this alone should give you an idea of my state of mind lately.)

I’m of course talking about the snow. In case you hadn’t heard, the east coast was walloped last week with two back-to-back storms that resulted in the shut down of the federal government for almost an entire week. The kids have missed seven straight days of school (today, although a holiday, was supposed to be a snow make-up day, but it was—whadayaknow—canceled due to—wait for it—snow!). If you count the two weekends we’ve been snowed in, the children have been home for 11 straight days.

I think those of you who read this blog regularly know a few things about me by now:

1) I like horses.
2) I like to sleep.
3) I have a very low tolerance for spending lots and lots of time with my kids.

And I have to qualify #3 because that’s really about me, not my kids. I need a lot of alone time to function in the world. There’s really no one I can spend that much time with without growing tired of them. And really, my kids are great and actually very low maintenance. As I write this, they’re downstairs playing nicely together. Oh wait…no, they’re not…I just heard the television.

Me: “Kids, who told you that you were allowed to watch television?”

Silence.

Me: “Since when can you watch TV without permission?”

I was answered with a chorus of very unconvincing “sorries.”

Sigh.

They know I’m weak. Like a lion watching the lone antelope limping far behind the herd, the kids know I can’t hold out much longer. Any semblance of routine and discipline I’ve worked hard these six years to establish is one juice box and a snack-pack of Hershey kisses away from crumbling. At this point, I’d let the children draw on the walls and set the living room couch on fire if it means I get fifteen minutes of uninterrupted quiet.

So, yes, the snow. I actually did quite well for the first week of it. There’s no getting around the fact that the snow is beautiful. When I woke up in the morning, I would look out the window ready to grouse and grumble, but then be so taken by the pure white landscape filling the window frame that I couldn’t help but whisper—usually to the dogs—“Isn’t it beautiful?”

And the fact that we had so much snow meant no cars were out, which meant I could walk the dogs all over the neighborhood down the center of the street. The night the last storm hit, I took the dogs out around nine o’clock. The snow was falling in giant, pancake-like flakes. No one was out but us. It was absolutely silent. I could have walked forever.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that the kids love the snow. Our neighbors built the equivalent of a skeleton track in their front yard, and every day the kids would trek down the street with their sleds in tow and spend hours zipping down it like they were training for the Olympics.

And because the government was closed, Dave was home from work for the week. So we’ve had FAMILY TIME like nobody’s business. We played cards. We baked. We cooked. We watched movies together and ate popcorn. We shoveled snow. We drank hot chocolate. Seriously, Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better scene—except for the parts where Noah would serenade us with arm-fart covers of “Happy Birthday” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

For the most part, I’ve enjoyed it. I commented to Dave how rare it is to have time with the kids where we’re forced to do nothing. Even on vacation, we’re usually running from one place to the next. But being snowed-in, running wasn’t an option. Our lives, typically scheduled to within an inch of our lives, all of a sudden had no boundaries. We didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. No Tae Kwon Do. No Ballet. No horses. No buying snacks for the Valentine’s Day party at school. No homework. Aside from the little bit of work Dave and I were able to squeeze in from time to time, we did nothing for over a week.

But we all knew I couldn’t enjoy it forever. A refrain throughout Dave’s and my life together has been, “What fun is vacation when you don’t have anything to compare it to?” Whenever we’ve had stretches of unemployment or slogged through too-long, too-boring vacations, we’ve said how important it is to have the routine—and work—of normal life from which to take a break. Otherwise, it’s not a break. It’s Groundhog Day.

And that’s what these snow days have become. Nothing distinguishes one day from the next. Thursday night as we were going to bed, I said to Dave, “I can’t believe tomorrow is going to be exactly the same as today, and exactly the same as the day before that. When is it going to end?” Even the dogs have had it. Our young dog Clara, who spent the better part of the first five days of snow bounding through it like a sled dog (in fact, I even bought her a harness and hooked the kids’ sled to it), now stands on the steps leading out our back door with a kind of bewildered “not-this-again” look on her face.



(Our older dog, Barrabas, has been unimpressed since day one.) They keep waiting for me to put on my riding boots and load them in the car to drive to the barn, but that hasn’t happened in ten days because the roads to the barn have been impassable as well.

In a perfect summation of what this snow has done to our spirits, my neighbor Cy sent an email the other night: “I’ve even lost the will to drink.” To which my friend Lee Ann replied, “I haven’t lost the will. We’ve just run out.”

I was ready to take the dogs for a long walk and never return.

Luckily, our friends Heather and Vince came for a visit from Philadelphia this weekend, reminding us that life existed beyond our single, half-mile block. It was like Noah (of the Bible, not my son) seeing the dove with the olive branch in its beak for the first time that signaled to him the floodwaters had receded. The end of the snow tunnel was, however dimly, in sight.

We got a babysitter Saturday night and went to the city with a group of friends for dinner and then to a bar to watch a band. I drank and danced and reveled in the fact that I wasn’t at home watching Ella Enchanted and eating my bodyweight in popcorn yet again.

…and then came the email yesterday afternoon from the school district telling us schools would be closed Monday…and the weather report predicting another snowfall, albeit lighter, tonight. And with all this went my sanity and any hope that life will ever return to normal. The dove with the olive branch in its beak just took a nosedive into a snow bank. But, alas, I still have my will to drink.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. And I realize I should write now about Haiti or Afghanistan or Iraq or the Democratic Republic of Congo—or any of the other hundreds of places in the world where death lurks in every corner. But what’s actually been preoccupying me lately is the death of horses. And I want to say right here that I believe the death of a human being—whether hundreds of thousands or one—is more tragic than the death of an animal. But I also believe that whenever a soul leaves a body—whether that body is two-legged or four-legged, or crawls or runs or slithers or flies—there is a mourning. It means a subtraction from the sum total of life in the world, and I grieve for the loss. I feel this way even when I kill bugs.

So the reason I’m so preoccupied with horse death lately is my friend Stephanie in Charlottesville called a few weeks ago and told me, through a voice choked with anguished tears, that the vet would be coming in a few days to put down Dee Dee.

Dee Dee was my first horse. I don’t want to bore you with the details of how Dee Dee came to be my first horse and then came to be my friend Stephanie’s horse, so let give you an abbreviated version: Shortly after we moved to northern Virginia from New Mexico, it was clear that Dee Dee, who by this time was 24 years old, was ready to retire. As luck would have it, one of my best friends from high school, Stephanie, lived just three hours south of us on five beautiful acres, and was looking for a horse to do some light trail riding and be a safe first horse for her two sons. I offered her Dee Dee. She took her.

When Stephanie called to tell me Dee Dee was going to be put down, I wasn’t surprised. She had just turned 29 years old, which puts her, in human years, solidly in her mid- to late-80s. Few horses live that long. I last saw Dee Dee in November, when we went to visit Stephanie and her family for the weekend. Dee Dee still looked remarkable for her age, but it was clear she was declining. She had lost weight and was losing her eyesight. When she would walk, I could tell her hind legs were stiff and likely hurting. Stephanie and I talked about it and I told her if she was still my horse, I would have her euthanized now, while she was still relatively healthy and happy. The alternative was to risk a catastrophic event—colic or a fall on the ice and broken pelvis—that would force the issue and put her through unnecessary trauma and pain. The fact was, she couldn’t live much longer. It was better to give her a peaceful, pain-free death.

Stephanie agreed in theory, but as the person who had to make that very real decision, it was torture. She had a horse who, by all measures, seemed okay. How could she make the decision to end her life?

***

Dee Dee was, quite simply, an exceptional horse. I’ve ridden probably fifty horses in my lifetime, and I’ve never known one who was as kind, trusting, and willing as Dee Dee. She took me over my first fence. She carried me over miles of trails. She would be the guest horse for anyone who came to visit. She would give pony rides to my nieces and nephews. She taught Dave how to ride. She was the first horse both of my kids ever rode.

And yet none of that really describes why she was exceptional. This is just what she did, not who she was. The essence of her was much greater than that…

Our property in New Mexico was bordered by a narrow, fairly deep irrigation ditch. The only way to get off the property was to either drive across the cattle guard that lay across it, or walk across a small, very old, very rickety footbridge that was about eight feet long and only three feet wide. Within a few days of Dee Dee’s arrival in New Mexico (from California, her home state), we decided to take her across the footbridge. This was a really bad idea. The bridge was barely strong enough (or wide enough) for a full-grown human to cross safely, much less a half-ton horse. But I was stupid and didn’t realize this, so I led her across it. She hesitated, but trusted me and followed. The bridge held.

The way back, however, was different. Once again I crossed first and once again she hesitated. Once again I encouraged her to follow me, and once again she did. But this time, the second her hind legs were on the bridge, Dave and I heard a crack. The wood buckled and broke to pieces under her feet. She fell into the ditch. She managed to pull her front legs onto the other side of the bank, but her hind legs were caught. For a frantic minute, she struggled to pull herself out. She snorted and dug her front hooves into the dirt, but kept losing her footing. The whites ringed her eyes. I dug my own heels into the ground and leaned back on the lead rope that was attached to her halter, hoping if I could bring her head far enough forward, she’d have enough weight in front to pull herself out. I pulled; she continued to scramble for purchase. Finally, she lunged forward and dragged herself out of the ditch. I was relieved, but as she walked away, she hopped on three legs, refusing to put any weight on her left hind. I looked under her to see a deep cut on the inside of her thigh and blood running down her leg.

We called the vet, who drove out to the farm to look at it and assured us the cut wasn’t bad. She would need a few weeks off for it to heal, but no muscles were torn. She wouldn’t need stitches. Still, it was clear she was in pain and I felt terrible that I was responsible for it. After the vet left, I stood with Dee Dee for a good while, my face pressed into her neck, whispering my apologies. Every instinct in Dee Dee told her not to cross that bridge—but she ignored them and crossed because I asked her to.

A few weeks later, after she was healed, and after we had built a strong, solid, wide bridge with rails that the horses could cross, I led Dee Dee up the driveway to it. As we approached, she stopped and stretched out her long neck and snorted at it. I stepped onto the bridge and told her, “Come on, girl. It’s okay. I promise.” She took one hesitant step, and then another, until all four feet were on the bridge. She stood there for a moment, and then tentatively walked across it.

This was the essence of Dee Dee: her willingness to trust the people around her again and again, even after they’d betrayed her. But she did it with a certain dignity. She didn’t follow blindly. Rather, she had the air of a monarch who bends to the will of her subjects because she knows her duty is to serve.

***

Stephanie called me the afternoon Dee Dee was put down. “She’s gone,” she told me quietly. It was clear she had been crying, but it wasn’t the anguished sobs of her earlier phone call. It was a cry of grief, unadorned and unburdened.

She told me how, a few hours earlier, when the vet came and inserted the first syringe to sedate Dee Dee and the second syringe to send her into an irreversible anesthetized sleep, Dee Dee quietly bent her legs and laid down with the dignity that had accompanied her the span of her long life. She told me how peaceful it was and how she could feel her spirit leave her. She told me how it was not so much a death as a moving on, a transition from one place to the next.

I’ve written a lot here about my agnosticism and reluctance to believe in things I can’t see, including heaven. Yet for some reason, whenever an animal I’ve loved has died, I have no problem imagining it in paradise. I can easily imagine Dee Dee in a field with endless green grass and clover, in a herd where she is most definitely the boss, perhaps with a foal at her side. There are no flies in this place and no predators. Mostly, she spends her time grazing and galloping with the herd and taking long naps in the sun. Occasionally she jumps a log on the ground because she remembers how much fun that used to be. And she eats the apples and carrots the kids bring to her, and she’ll even take them for a ride every now and then.

But even as I write that, I doubt it’s true. It’s not that Dee Dee’s spirit doesn’t live on. It does. But it’s not in a place. Where Dee Dee lives is in the lives of all the people who rode her throughout the years. All the people, like myself, she ferried over their first fence—giving we earthbound mortals the sense that, for a moment, we were flying. All those she took exploring over unknown hills and across vast deserts. All those who rode her in horse shows and won ribbons that they hung on her bridle and could see in her a pride that told them on some level, she knew she had won. Where Dee Dee lives is in all those who asked her to trust them, and felt her whisper a quiet “yes” in reply.

Sunday, January 31, 2010, Orlando, Fla. – I fear I’m becoming a curmudgeon. Or maybe I’ve always been a curmudgeon and am just now realizing it. I’m not sure.

I’m writing this from DisneyWorld. The Happiest Place on Earth. Where You Wish Upon a Star and Dreams Come True. Where Magic Happens. I’m here with Dave and the kids (I hope that goes without saying) and my parents, who very generously bankrolled this trip. It’s our fourth and final night here and, I have to say, we’ve had a really great time. We’ve ridden the rides. We’ve seen the shows. We’ve eaten cotton candy. (Okay, I’ve eaten cotton candy.) We got to enjoy 70 degrees and sun while it as 20 degrees and snowing in DC. All in all, a really great trip.

And yet, when it comes down to it, I don’t like it. I don’t like Disney.

I’m sure writing that sentence just put me on a terrorist watch list somewhere. After all, how un-American can I be? That’s like saying I don’t like football or beer or apple pie (incidentally, I don’t really like those things either). But the truth is, something about Disney gives me the creeps…something beyond the ubiquitous animatronics and mouse ears. It’s the singularity of it all—both commercially (Disney owns virtually all of Orlando) and metaphorically. As metaphor, Disney represents the small world. The belief that we’re all ultimately the same. One nation (nay—one world) united under Mickey. It feels suspiciously like groupthink. Walking around DisneyWorld, I feel like the only one who hasn’t drank the Kool-Aid and that it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out and put in the fake stocks in Frontierland for the rest of my life.

DisneyWorld to me feels eerily similar to the 1960s British TV series “The Prisoner,” of which my high school boyfriend was a huge fan. It only ran for 17 episodes but, as luck would have it, Blockbuster Video carried every single one. So on Friday night, my boyfriend and I would rent them and go back to his apartment (although he was in high school, he lived alone in his own apartment—my parents were thrilled about this fact) to watch it. The series chronicled the life of a British secret agent who resigns from service only to wake up and find himself held captive in an unknown village on an unknown coast, where everyone is happy and pleasant and the weather is always sunny and 75 degrees. No one in the village has names, just numbers (our hero is “Number Six”). Number One is the leader, but no one has seen him (her?) or knows who it is. Everyone in the village seems content with their happy, perfect little life, and Number Six distrusts all of it.

Needless to say, it was the perfect TV show for a couple of high school kids who lived in a picture-perfect suburb of Houston and fancied themselves rebels who raged against the machine on a daily basis. As it turns out, it was also a business model for DisneyWorld (which, suspiciously, opened just three years after the finale of “The Prisoner.”) In Disney, all the little girls are referred to “princesses” (not quite numbers, but close). All cast members (not employees, but “cast members”) smile pretty much constantly. “Dreams come true” is the inescapable theme of everything—every song, every ride, every show, every piece of merchandise…even sections of the park closed for renovation are plastered with signs that say “dream builders.”

Then there’s just the fact that everything is a façade. The buildings aren’t real. Most of the plants are fake. Even the “mud” that the safari trucks drive through in Animal Kingdom (where, to Disney’s credit, the animals are real) is actually plastic molded to look like mud.

Now I realize this is the whole point of a theme park. It’s intended to be a world of pretend into which you escape for a brief period of time. You shouldn’t go there expecting reality. If you want to go on a real safari, take a trip to Kenya, right? I get that. And I have to say, as a patron, I appreciate that the parks are well run and well maintained and the staff is courteous and helpful. But I just can’t lose myself in the fantasy. I don’t trust it. Instead, I spend my time walking around the park looking for glimpses of reality. I try to glance through open doors that say “cast members only” to see if I can spot the scaffolding propping up the saloon wall, or Snow White taking a smoke break, or, hell, even the bathroom attendant scowling and muttering under her breath, “Damn tourists.”

I was talking to my parents about this, and remembering how, as a child, I never liked books or movies that were set in fantasy worlds. I loathed Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book James and the Giant Peach freaked me out. Even now, I rarely read or watch anything that would qualify as sci-fi (thus why I have no desire to see Avatar and haven’t read any of the Twilight series). My dad said he’s the same way. He tried to read the Harry Potter books but couldn’t because the whole time he kept thinking, “If they have all this magic, why don’t they just use it to stop the villain?”

My mom shook her head. “But if that’s your approach to life, you never enjoy anything. If you’re always skeptical, you can’t lose yourself in a book or movie.”

Both my dad and I protested that we could, but only if the book or movie had an element of realism.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if my mom is right. I’ve often wished I could suspend disbelief long enough to read and enjoy a really cheesy romance novel, or spend three hours watching a self-indulgent James Cameron film, or believe in God. Am I missing out by being so hell-bent on what’s real?

I once read about how, when Captain Cook’s ships first arrived off the coast of Australia in the 1700s, the aborigines didn’t see them. Or, rather, they could see them, but they couldn’t perceive them. Because they had never seen these huge sailing ships before, their minds were unable to create an image of them. It wasn’t until they saw the rippling wake of the ships on the water that they could then perceive what they were.

The veracity of this story is widely debated. New Agers like to use it as proof that we are, indeed, surrounded by all sorts of things—spirits, energies, auras—that most people don’t have the mental vocabulary to see. Scientists say the story is apocryphal and that the mind has no problem perceiving things it doesn’t understand.

While I want to believe the New Agers are right, I tend to side with the scientists. It’s kind of sad. I’ve always loved Hamlet’s words to Horatio, who doubts the events that are transpiring: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” But even if I love the sentiment, God knows (if He exists) that I don’t live it.

And what’s worse, I’m passing this way-too-healthy dose of skepticism on to my children. Noah lost his first tooth a couple months ago, and already he doubts the existence of the tooth fairy. He’s not too sure about this whole Santa thing, either. Gwyneth told Dave today that the only princess she likes is Pocahantas “because she was a real person; the others are made up.” Dave blamed this on his genetic contribution (his side of the family is lousy with scientists), but I know I’m responsible, too. Not just my genes (which are weighted heavily in favor of engineers), but my very outlook on life, which seems to be slowly sucking the magic and wonder of childhood out of my children.

Last night, we were at the Magic Kingdom for the fireworks. And I have to admit, it was, for lack of a better word, magical. We arrived just as the first firework made its arc through the air. Amazingly, we even managed to find our own private little spot from which to watch the display burst in all its pyrotechnic glory above Cinderella’s castle. For a few moments, I forgot that the castle was nothing more than plywood and plastic. I forgot that the music being piped through the loudspeakers wasn’t a live orchestra, and that the fireworks were specifically designed for Disney using a reduced-smoke chemical (which Dave informed us). For a few moments, I completely lost myself in the beauty of the show. I looked down at my kids and could see the wonder of childhood seemingly steeled against escape and locked deep within them…until about half-way through when Noah and Gwyneth turned to us and said, “Can we go now?”…reminding me that magic, even in its truest form, is always short-lived.