Magic

My parents didn't buy into this "make childhood magical" business. I mean, I had preetttyy darn magical birthdays and Christmas, and I full-on believed in magic (and to an extent, probably still do) for a long time.

I mean, I made a decision in late elementary school that I needed to figure out if Santa was real or not because I figured I'd be a mom someday, and I didn't want to be standing there on Christmas morning confused about where the presents were.

So, without too much daily effort on the part of my parents, my childhood sparkled.

Now that I'm a mom, I have little patches of time when I worry that I'm missing out on some of the magic with my kids.  Like, I worry that I don't play with them enough. I'm folding laundry when I could be racing trucks. Then I remember that there are no magical laundry fairies and I move on with my life.

Since it's Spring Break, and since I'm that odd combination of working mom and stay-at-home mom that is a teacher, I've been thinking a lot about this magical childhood thing.

I put a lot of work into adventures and excitement for my boy this week. I made a point not to tell him about anything until we were basically having the adventure because I didn't want to spend Spring Break dealing with the preschooler disappointment spiral (it's not cute, y'all).  But we had adventures. We went to meet his daddy at a favorite pizza place in the pouring rain. We went to the zoo. We ran around San Francisco. We frolicked at Discovery Kingdom.

Magic.

And he had a great time. And it was worth it. And like I told a friend today, I would have been exhausted watching the munchkins at home (the sometimes stay-at-home mom hath not the patience of the actual stay-at-home mom), so I might as well be exhausted out having an adventure (and, duh, exhausting them in the process).

So, I gave the boy some magic. And he LOVED it, relished it, truly appreciated it.

And yet.

I watched him this week and realized that he creates his own magic.  He discovered four worms (four, yes, four. I know because I had to see them, too, of course) and spent like three hours examining them yesterday. He smiled and flew like an eagle all the way out of the amusement park today, and not because someone told him to, but because he wanted to fly like an eagle.  He made up stories about what he saw in the ocean when we were in San Francisco (or Mexico, as he kept calling it...).

We will continue our adventures because they build memories. Because I enjoy spending time with my kids. Because it's awesome getting out with other families and sharing in the joys (and the, ahem, other aspects) of parenting.

But.

While he loves having adventures with me, my son doesn't need me in order to find the magic in the air.  He makes it himself. He IS magic.