Whimsy and Magic

In which wonder and Beauty abound.

My living room ceiling is a disaster. Pin holes, patches of missing paint, tacky residue from an ill-advised experiment with glue dots – the ceiling has definitely seen better days. But I have no regrets. Why? Because that’s where some of the whimsy and magic live at my house.

Let me explain. Years ago, the girls and I made paper snowflakes, and decided to hang them from the living room ceiling. When spring came, rather than just revert to a bare ceiling, we replaced them with huge tissue paper flowers, blooming above us. Then summer came, and I don’t recall what we did next, but somehow we found ourselves changing the ceiling to match the seasons, and a tradition was born.

Over time, we’ve had many themes: Last summer ice cream cones and lemonade cups and popsicles hung down temptingly over our heads. All through the long COVID winter, the ceiling hosted a dark sky dotted with small origami boxes fitted over twinkling lights. We’ve had painted leaves and leaf prints; a gorgeous, swirling galaxy filled with stars and planets and comets; paper cranes and butterflies; a tie-dye abstract garden; a cloudy sky snowing down on us; and a host of other beauties. Right now I am typing this under a lily pond, with one menacing shark fin in the middle, just for fun.

I am raising my children in suburban Maryland, in a fairly nondescript house, in a lovely-but-not-unusual neighborhood. They attend the local public schools, which are decent, but nothing really special. Our days are pretty predictable; we are living a highly typical American middle-class life. It’s fine, and I’m aware of the tremendous privileges we have, but it’s not inherently quirky or unconventional. My kids aren’t growing up on a gorgeous hilltop farm, like my brother’s children, or in a high-rise in Manhattan, or rowing to school each morning from their island home, or being homeschooled in a camper while driving around North America on a multi-year road trip, or or or… And so imbuing their worlds with magic is up to me.

Thus - inspired by my brilliant friend, Jenna, who, along with her husband, would create merry mayhem with a set of plastic dinosaurs throughout the month of December, for their kids to wake to - my girls woke up one February morning in 2018, and found a small set of sparkling pink footprints running from the kitchen window, across the ceiling, and to the fridge:

Opening the fridge door, they discovered, to their surprise, that the milk had turned pink! And with that surprise they discovered also the merry imp Cupid, who arrives early in the month of February each year, and scatters mischief and love around in unexpected ways, always leaving his footprints at the scene, and often gifts as well. Cupid’s antics culminate on Valentine’s Day, after which he disappears and does not return until the next February has arrived.

Since 2018, Cupid has filled the girls’ coat pockets with chocolates, and released dozens of heart-shaped helium balloons in the family room…

He has followed us on vacation and decorated the girls’ hotel room...

He has created a spiderweb of yarn in the dining room, all hung with lollipops…

He has left heart-shaped raspberry jello and homemade cookies spelling out “You Are Loved” on their placemats…

He has lit up the living room with twinkling lights, he has dyed their hair red and pink while they were sleeping (that was a fun mess), and covered the ceilings above their three beds with hundreds of glowing stars and planets and other celestial bodies, and more. And his work is far from done…

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not up at all hours of the night, every night, 365 days a year, making magic for my kids, or creating extravagant art with them at every opportunity. These are a couple of special examples, but the most important thing - the essential thing - is that I am always teaching and showing my girls that magic and whimsy are everywhere. Most often - as I’ve written about before - we find what we are looking for outside: a dew-strung spider web, alight in the morning sun like strings of tiny Christmas lights; a shiny black beetle, busy with the work of her day; the 945th variation of hellebore in our garden; a perfect, silent, winter evening snowstorm; the mystery and wonder of this summer’s Brood X cicada swarm, which had its epicenter right in our region; and on and on and on. I don’t want my girls to ever feel that they live in a world without Beauty and wonder, even when I’m not right there to orchestrate its presence in their lives. If I leave one legacy behind, let this be it: That my children never lose their capacity for awe, and that they always see the magic all around them.

A member of the Brood X swarm chills out on my tradescantia.