May 20th

Today I am grateful for good old fashioned magic!

Lucy was riffling through the craft room shelves tonight and she came across an icecream container.

"What's this, mama?"

"That's Benji's magic box"

*eyes increase in size by about three fold*

"Can we open it?"

"We'll need to wait until Benji gets home, but I'm sure he'll love that".

Synopsis of next 45 minutes.....

*"When will Benji be home?"

"How long now?"

"What about now?"

"Has it been 30 minutes, yet?"

"How long is half an hour?"

"When will he be home again, Mum?"

*Repeat. Ad nauseum for 30 minutes.

*shudder*

But then, he arrives and (I was mightily impressed) she actually waited a whole two minutes of hellos before the excitement tumbled out.

  Benji's already known as 'magic' in our house.  He magics the (toy) mice away and magics them back again.  And tonight the rings were a hit, as was escaping the wrist binding.

The wide eyes!  The looking to me to work out how to interpret what she's just seen.  So, so precious.

I love that he brings that kind of mystery and excitement into her life.

Magic, in all its incarnations, is such a wonderful gift.

There is so much more to our world, to our existence than I could ever explain to her.  There's a lot I'm still working out for myself!  

And when the extent of my knowledge of this universe has reached its perimeters, and she looks to me and asks how dogs know when you're ill or why sitting by the ocean makes mama less crazy, I love that I can look at her with utter sincerity and say, "it's just magic, baby".