Thursday, June 28, 2001
Magic Juice
When Devon was a little tyke I would often rub a little bit of lotion on his wounds to make it feel better. For the most part, it was a placebo effect much the same as a child demanding a Band-Aid for every scrape, bruise, bump and cut. Almost without fail, it worked wonderfully. Magically, one could even say. Soon, all lotion came to be known as “Magic Juice.“ Devon would bump his shin or scrape an elbow and run to me begging for “Magic Juice” to make everything better.
Recently, Sebastian woke up in the wee hours of the morning crying and screaming, obviously in severe pain. Based on the hideous screams tearing forth from my wee child, I was sure that the poor thing was being flayed alive by gruesome creatures, or else he was being eaten from the inside out by some terrible chemical reaction caused by soy milk and crackers. When I rushed to his aid and begged him to tell me what the problem was, he insisted that his leg hurt.
As a child I suffered many excruciating leg aches and my parents were quick to dismiss my pain as imagination or some stall from going to bed. I refused to do that to Sebastian so I patiently spent several long minutes offering everything I could think of to make things right and to ease his pain. Cuddles, Tylenol, massaging the area, the heating pad and even ice packs were useless and only caused more turmoil. I was desperate enough to even offer a cookie in hopes of calming him down. No go.
Something stirred in my memory and I blurted out, “Let me put some Magic Juice on it!“ Sebastian gave me an odd look and actually stopped crying. He said matter-of-factly, “There’s no such thing as magic.“ (I suppose The Audience” told him to say that.)
“Sebastian,“ I persisted, “There certainly is magic. There’s magic everywhere. What about flowers and trees? Aren’t they magic?“
Again, the deadpan look and a flat response of, “No. That’s just nature, Mommy. There is no such thing as magic.“
As a parent, I would truly like for my children to believe in magic, but more importantly, I believe in magic and I don’t want them to spoil it for me. I searched every inch of my brain for proof of magic and finally managed, “What about Santa Claus! Why he MUST be magic! How does he get all of those toys for boys and girls if not by magic?“
Sebastian yawned, curled up in his bed and answered, “He steals them from toy stores. That’s why you can’t return them for something better. Now can you stop talking, my leg wants to go to sleep.“
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