LETTERS FROM HOME: HOPING THE FARIES WILL COME OUT AND PLAY

July 13, 2000

Dear Patty,

A few nights ago, DC and I walked with the nieces from Cincinnati to the river, where we sat on benches and watched searchlights from boats playing on the banks. Three policemen were at one of the floodgates, helping search this black and swampy night for a boater stranded on the river above the city.

A week earlier, a similar scenario had turned out badly. A boat was hit by a barge and a man was lost in the river. The body still hadn't been found, we told the girls. The night suddenly seemed darker.

At Grace Cafe, everyone had an Italian soda except Kim, who chose a bottle of root beer because she knows what she likes. Kim was excited about the new Harry Potter book coming out the next day. She'd read all three previous volumes. When I told her one store in town was staying open until midnight for Potter fans who couldn't wait until morning, a plot was hatched.

DC wanted the fairies to come out.

It's her way of describing the moments of wonder in our lives, experiences tattooed on our brains. The moments almost always occur spontaneously, but stages must be set, eyes opened, risks sometimes taken.

DC's father has a way of creating these moments. One dusk at their cabin, he summoned everyone to the river for a mystery boat ride in the dark. There, in the silence in the middle of the river, the fairies came out, thousands of fireflies in the sky and glow worms on the banks.

When his Rotary Club was having a white elephant sale, he built a white elephant from wood and burlap and proposed to make bubbles spout from its trunk. The glycerin for the bubbles was stored in a special place in the basement, which made DC believe the children who told her her feet could explode if she happened to walk in it.

Though the bubble machine never quite worked, a white elephant came to live in DC's back yard.

Who knows if going to get a Harry Potter book at midnight would help create one of these moments for Kim or Carly. What seems true is that they come when we choose to do something extraordinary instead of routine.

I reasoned there might be parental concerns about the girls staying up past midnight because they were getting up early the next morning to fly to Orlando.

DC was not interested in reasoning. She wanted fairies.

The girls coached her on how to approach their parents. "Put on your serious face," one of them advised.

Alas, both the girls and the fairies slept well that night, but it's no midsummer night's tragedy. The fairies only wait to be summoned.

Love, Sam