A Little Magic

When I taught first grade I somehow managed to convince the kids who didn’t believe in Santa anymore that he might actually be real, everyone that leprechauns exist, the sometimes difficult children that I know everything so we might as well cut to the chase, and the whole class that I control the weather. One thing that I always find so refreshingly beautiful with younger children is that they live in a place where magic really does exist and when given a seed of hope or magic can see it bloom into a veritable Eden of imagination, joy, and hopeful peace. It’s a shame that so many adults have lost the ability to find joy, humor, and peace even when things don’t go the way we expect them to, especially during the tough times.

I am fortunate that my husband is not one of those people.

He never stops playing.

Yesterday after I didn’t get the news I was hoping for from my surgeon, my husband decided I needed a magical day out of my perpetual purgatory of recovery at home despite my adamant stay at home orders and took me out for an afternoon of shenanigans. We ate way too much at one of my favorite restaurants, one he is not terribly enthusiastic about, and went shopping because he decided I needed a new jacket to keep my interminably cold self warm (it was 85 F out and I was still chilly). Did we just go and find a jacket? No.

We rode the escalator.

Twice.

I was in the wheelchair.

We laughed hysterically and everyone who saw pretended not to, looking away awkwardly so as not to stare at the one legged man standing behind the one legged woman in a wheelchair.

To be honest, I find being on the escalator to be horrifyingly scary. But he insists and pushes me into it anyway.

After irritating the poor managers who obviously didn’t want a wheelchair on the escalator, we went to the driving range. Not just any driving range, mind you, but one nestled in the foothills of the Rockies with a hill of death…

Erm, incline of destruction…

*Cough* slope of doom…

Handicap accessible ramp heading down to the course. Conveniently, they used the ramp as a parking area for the golf carts but between off-roading and burning holes in my wheelchair gloves I managed to make it to where husband and some friends were hitting buckets of balls.

I will admit that I know about as much about golfing as I do about landing an airplane, that is to say I can tell if it’s a good swing or a good landing by watching but I sure can’t tell you what was done to make it so. As husband et al began to beat the heck out of those balls, a high school golf team walked down to the grass to practice. And so began the heckling.

I felt bad for those poor high school boys. The snarky remarks were hard to ignore! The more I heckled, the worse the laughter from everyone and the worse the golfing.

My day didn’t go as I had hoped, but it was still magical in that I did things I’ve never done before and laughed until my sides hurt. I could have stayed at home, sitting in misery, and wondering why I’m stuck where I am and why nothing is going the way I want, but instead there was more pleasure than what is reasonable in riding escalators, not using handicap ramps, and heckling.

It was nothing short of a little bit of magic.

Even though it was terrifying and difficult and nothing close to East and I have a stay at home for my health and well-being order.