The Magic of Childhood

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Allow me a little moment to get entirely too sentimental, and to write a post about imagination, about that silly, 'childish' belief in magic and magical things that dissipates far too quickly as we reach adulthood. That time when you believed in the Easter Bunny, in Father Christmas, or the Tooth Fairy. Those moments spent writing Christmas lists or carefully placing your tooth under a pillow. I'd like to talk about those those exact moments in time, and pinpoint that moment in your childhood where you believed, without question, in the existence of these beings. The belief in something magical, and special, and outside of our real world is something I'll defend well into adulthood. Because honestly? It's real. They're real. All of them.

Maybe I'm at that ripe old age where I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore, but that doesn't mean he never existed. Right?

The truth is, I am highly emotional, I am extremely nostalgic and I am unreasonably, unflinchingly sentimental. Santa Claus to me was the magic on Christmas morning when I walked into the lounge and saw the pile of presents under the tree. He was the bells outside my window when I couldn't sleep, threatening me with his imminent arrival, and he was the note thanking me for the mince pies and sherry on Christmas morning. The Easter Bunny was the mischievous trickster who made treasure hunts that sent me all around the garden in the early hours, looking for eggs planted among the Spring flowers. He was the note that mentioned a 'Swedish family member', later revealing an egg hidden inside our family's Volvo. The Easter Bunny, right there, is that memory; a clue I didn't understand as a child, a moment in time captured forever in that memory. I doubt my parents remember it, I doubt my Dad recalls the night he wrote that particular clue. But it's here, forever, inside of me, stored away under the guise of Easter Bunny trickery. My adult self might 'know' the truth, but the memory doesn't have that knowledge. The memory never will.

And there were so many others filed away with those. Firecracker, the stallion in the field opposite Dad's café. I never saw him, not really, but I'd spend ages looking for him while sat in our car, waiting for Dad to finish his business, as my mother pointed out he's just there!, can't you see? And she'd tell me to look a little closer. I nearly saw him, I think. I caught glimpses of him, at least. It doesn't matter that I now know, in my grown up-addled state, that those fields never housed horses, or any livestock, for that matter. The knowledge I have now doesn't come into it. Firecracker is as real as any other childhood memory. The dragon breath that burned the clouds turn red and pink in the evenings. The first star each night that actually answered wishes, should you ask. The pegasi that flew alongside the car when dad drove me places. The mysterious land my friend Amanda and I found across the stream and down a country alley.

I remember those things, I remember them happening. Of course I do. Because they were real.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that if we're lucky, we believe in these things until we're about eight, nine years old, maybe? And, if we're lucky, we'll live to be in our 90s, maybe even reach the ripe old age of 100. That means we have nine years, out of ninety or a hundred, spent believing in something a little more. Only one tenth of our entire life will be spent believing in magic, and fairy tales, and superheroes, and bogeymen.

Isn't that so disproportionate and sad? Shouldn't that mean we should prolong the moments of innocence and magic for as long as possible? Isn't that our duty?

Hell, I am a grown up. There's no avoiding that now. I'm barely a 'young adult' anymore, but there's still this pinch in my heart, a tiny unreasonable, ridiculous hole in my heart that screams to my creative, artistic, dreamer's mind; what if Hogwarts is real? What if the books and the movies were written as a coverup, the ultimate double bluff? That J.K had known that something was up, all along? The same with The Doctor and his silly blue TARDIS. Is it all just a game? A daft ruse by the BBC to convince us it's just a TV show, yet all the while giving the facts right there, in our faces? What if The Doctor really, truly, is real?

If I can't let go one-hundred percent, even as a rational, questionably sane adult, why are so many people so utterly complacent that their children are losing their fairy-tale dreams? When our time believing is so unavoidably limited to those brief few years of childhood, maybe priority should be put on enabling the dreams and daydreams of our children. Maybe time should be spent dedicated to enriching the fantasies and silliness of fairy tales and superheroes.

Life is fast, and life sure is busy, but it's also pretty short in the scheme of things. Childhood is just a fraction of that, and if we can't make it last any longer, why don't we make it so much larger?