I can't put my finger on the moment that I couldn't pretend anymore, but I do remember bring sixteen, baby sitting, and realizing that the magic of imagination and pretend had slipped away years before and I hadn't even realized it. It is a visceral realization of growing up.
As I read about Jess and Leslie creating their imaginary kingdom of Terabithia in the woods near their houses, I could think only about the worlds I created for myself in the woods across the street from my house, the places I made in our unfinished basement...and being able to physically will myself to believe it all for hours on end. While I was reading, Jess and Leslie became kindred spirits.
They were moved by beauty, the feeling of fullness and wanting it to last forever: "They took turns swinging across the gully on the rope. It was a glorious autumn day, and if you looked up as you swung, it gave you the feeling of floating. Jess leaned back and drank in the rich, clear color of the sky. He was drifting, drifting like a fat white lazy cloud back and forth across the blue."
When I was younger, summer nights were the greatest. All of the kids in my neighborhood would be running through our adjoining backyards, soaking up every last shred of daylight and catching lightning bugs into the twilight. Even though I knew there would always be another summer evening with cool grass beneath my feet and the smell of trees and creek and corn in the air, my heart broke when night finally came and we all had to go inside. I spent many evenings after bed time with my face pressed against the screen, trying to breathe in the evening air for as long as possible.
They felt the need to create sacred spaces: "This is not an an ordinary place," she whispered. "Even the rulers of Terabithia come into it only at times of greatest sorrow or greatest joy. We must strive to keep it sacred. It would not do to disturb the Spirits."
Once in college, a few friends of mine and I found ourselves in an enormous grove of pine trees that were planted a hundred years ago in straight lines spanning for hundreds of yards. Without even thinking, my friend Erin and I started sprinting down the aisle of trees...running and jumping seemed the only proper response to such a scene: we were so utterly joyful that merely starring at it all wasn't enough. My friend Matt took a picture of this pre-digital photography and caught us both in midair. It was in a frame for years and below it I pasted the quote: "Perhaps they could run over the hill and across the fields to the stream and swing themselves into Terabithia."
This happened again when I went to England with two kindred and we saw true English countryside for the first time. We just couldn't believe that it existed in real life the same way we had pictured it in our minds in all our favorite books. I do have physical proof of our giddiness:
When the tragedy is revealed at the end and Jess' horrid sister tells him blatantly, it literally plunged my heart like a dagger, even though I knew all along what was coming. Jess and Leslie are just too kindred for it to not hurt like crazy. It is the moment that the magic makes the first break: where it's impossible to be completely immersed in imagination. But. It doesn't mean that it no longer exists.
Bits of the magic come back to me sometimes and remind me that the world is enchanted. Most of the time it's when the eastern woodlands smell like Ohio. Some of the time it's when the sun is setting and the light is perfectly orange and the shadows purple. Sometimes I feel again athe essence of my heart aching because of all that is beautiful and good. And real.
Soundtrack for this book for me:
Pacific Street/Hem
Why Should I Cry for You/Sting
All At Sea/Jamie Cullum
Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own/U2
Yellow/Coldplay
1 comment:
I love this. The book and the blog and the life in them.
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