\u201cIf you don’t believe in any kind
of magic or mystery, you\u2019re as good as dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 – – – Albert Einstein<\/p>\n
My father was pure magic. When I\u00a0was seven years old, he tip-toed into my room one morning before dawn and whispered\u00a0my name. My eyes flew open. \u201cGet up and dress warm,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a\u00a0
surprise for you.\u201d He headed down the stairs.<\/p>\n
I jumped up, put on a t-shirt,\u00a0corduroy pants and a sweat shirt and met him in the kitchen. He drank a cup of\u00a0coffee that was so hot, a tear rolled down his cheek and I followed him out to\u00a0the car. I had no idea what was up, but it was already a grand adventure sinceI was alone with my father.<\/p>\n
He started up the car. \u201cWhere are\u00a0we going?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going to the empty field\u00a0beside the airport,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we going on a plane?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Something is coming to us.\u00a0It\u2019s a solar eclipse. When the sun starts to rise, the moon\u2019s going to cover it\u00a0and make it dark again for a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moon is jealous. It has to\u00a0disappear every morning when the sun comes up, but today, the moon wants\u00a0special attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was still dark when we got to\u00a0the airport. As we walked across the open field, I saw a few other adventurous\u00a0souls milling around in the darkness. I resented their presence and I took my\u00a0father\u2019s hand. When we got to the middle of the field, we stopped. My sneakers
were wet from the dew and I looked up at my father, thrilled by his long legs,\u00a0his straight back and all the things that he knew.<\/p>\n
The sun was starting to rise as a\u00a0faint glow appeared along the horizon, lighting up the edges of the sky. My\u00a0father\u2019s upturned face became a dark silhouette against the shining heavens and\u00a0I reached my arms upward, stretching out my fingers into the oncoming light that\u00a0was intensifying. But suddenly, it reversed itself, just like my dad had said\u00a0it would. My breath quickened as he and I smiled at each other. We stood still\u00a0for several moments, listening to the silence, amazed at the darkness until it\u00a0began to be overwhelmed by the light. The moon slipped away, making room for the\u00a0sun to dominate the sky once again and everything was back to normal. I felt\u00a0sad. I had been deeply connected to the world around me and to my father and I\u00a0didn’t want the adventure to end.<\/p>\n
On the ride back home, he told me\u00a0that the stars and planets were something called \u201clight years\u201d away from us.\u00a0\u201cSome of them burned out trillions of years ago and although we can still see\u00a0them, they don’t exist any more.\u201d I didn’t ask any questions. In a child\u2019s
innocence, I knew that some questions were unanswerable. Some things just\u00a0happened the way they did and if we tried to make them logical and give them a\u00a0name, the magic pours out and leaves a gaping hole. \u00a0<\/p>\n
J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan,\u00a0said, \u201cThe moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able\u00a0to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When my father and I got back home,\u00a0my mother looked a little bit sleepy as she put the cereal and milk on the\u00a0breakfast table. I sat down to eat my Sugar Frosted Flakes. \u201cThey\u2019re gre-e-e-at!\u201d\u00a0said Tony the Tiger on the front of the cereal box. My sister wandered into the\u00a0kitchen and I started to tell her about the eclipse but she barely listened.\u00a0She was preoccupied with homework she hadn\u2019t finished. She and my mother had\u00a0missed a miracle. I thought about what I had just seen and how unexpected it\u00a0had been. I was expecting an ordinary day and look what happened. In that
moment, I understood that magic was all around me if I took the time to stop,\u00a0listen and believe that it was hidden under the veils of everyday life. I\u00a0believe it still and when wonderful and unexpected surprises occur, I see my\u00a0father\u2019s crinkly, smiley eyes gazing up at the heavens.<\/p>\n
There is magic everywhere. It lives\u00a0in our dreams, our hopes, our friendships. In gymnasts who tumble and twist and\u00a0fly through the air. In figure skaters who skim and soar and jump on sheets of
ice. In ballet dancers who dance on the tips of their toes as if they are\u00a0walking on the ground. In the music that comes out of an opera singer\u2019s throat.\u00a0But it also shows up in less spectacular forms. A baby\u2019s first word. A dying\u00a0person\u2019s last word. The way our bodies heal. The way we feel when we fall in\u00a0love.<\/p>\n
Just because somone doesn\u2019t believe\u00a0in something doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Einstein Einstein knew that science\u00a0and magic were forever merged. He said, \u201cThere are two ways to live life \u2013 as\u00a0though nothing is a miracle or as though everything is a miracle.\u201d If we stay
awake and aware and expect magic instead of questioning it and imagining the\u00a0worst, we can become creators who allow and encourage special and spectacular moments\u00a0to come to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIf you don’t believe in any kindof magic or mystery, you\u2019re as good as dead.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0 – – – Albert Einstein My father was pure magic. When I\u00a0was seven years old, he tip-toed into my room one morning before dawn and whispered\u00a0my name. My eyes flew open. \u201cGet up and dress warm,\u201d he said. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2389,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions\/2389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}