Wonder

I've always classed fantasy stories into three groups: Those that purport to exist within our world (i.e. Harry Potter), those that are wholly separate from our world (i.e. Star Wars), and those in which you must escape our world to enter the fantasy world (i.e. Alice in Wonderland). Most of my favorites fall in the first two categories leaving those in the third category, stories in which kids escape to Neverland or Wonderland or Narnia, as my least favorite. I guess in some way I've always thought, or at least wished, that our world was full of magic and have liked my stories to reflect that reality. I don't like thinking the magic is all somewhere else.

However, this morning at around 10 AM the magic was gone. Beth was gone for the weekend, breakfast was accomplished but the kitchen and living room were a mess, I was already tired, and I had three hours to go until I could even think about putting the boys or myself down for a nap. What to do?

"Do you want to go to the park?" I asked Thomas. "Sure," he replied.

I knew it was chilly outside so I began putting on the jackets and shoes. After all of that rigmarole, the four of us boys stepped outside and discovered it was just a bit colder than I had anticipated. I looked down at the boys to see if they would be fazed, and they seemed fine, so I continued. Just as I had finished strapping the twins into their car seats, I heard a five-year-old voice behind me say, "I think its too cold to go to the park."

I had to think quick. "Okay. Let's just go for a drive along the river and look at the pretty leaves." Thomas agreed, and in fact he sounded excited, so we were off.

I drove down to the river, turned left and headed "north." (The Mississippi runs east-west in the Quad Cities.) It was a beautiful drive. We passed through small towns and over tributaries, saw bridges and dams and birds flying south and, most of all, foliage that was just beginning to bare its autumnal glory. We had gone about a half hour when I suddenly hatched a more ambitious plan: Eagle Point Park is just another half-hour up the road.

That was much farther than I had intended to travel and the provisions were light, but there is one feature to this park I knew Thomas would love, so I pulled over for gas and crackers and chocolate milk and Coke and we stocked up for the second half of our journey. The drive was really quite pleasant, with Thomas quizzing me about the Clone Wars episode we had watched the night before most of the way, and we made our way peacefully to the park.

We pulled into Eagle Point Park, parked by a playground and began to disembark the van. As we did so, I began to notice little white flakes in the air around me. "You've got to be kidding me," I thought to myself. "Can I play on the playground?" Thomas asked. "You can, but there's something else I want you to see first." Thomas acquiesced, though he sounded a bit disappointed.

I held the twins' hands as Thomas sauntered along beside us. "Dad, is it snowing?" Thomas asked. The flakes had become a little bit larger as we walked away from the playground equipment along a freshly mowed path lined with tall evergreens. "I think so," I smiled.

As we continued to walk through the trees, the wind and the snow continued to pick up. Thomas laughed, "I can see the snow in Russell's hair!" I laughed back through the snow, "This is crazy!" The twins were meandering in our general direction down the wide, still-green path and Thomas and I were laughing out loud as the snow grew absurdly thick in the air around us. It was as if time itself had gotten confused and the seasons had lost their moorings. And then in the midst of this summer-autumn-winter-wonderland a castle magically sprang into view.

In that moment I became the Darling children flown to Neverland, Dorothy swept off to Oz, the Pevensies in Narnia, Alice down the rabbit hole. Watching my three boys giggle as they rushed across the carpet of grass through the giant, fluffy snowflakes towards the castle crowned in golden tree-tops, I couldn't help being yanked momentarily into the fantasy world of my own childhood.

Being thrust so suddenly into such a pure state of wonder made me realize how far removed my daily life has become from the innocence of those younger days. I may still like my stories to tell me magic is all around, but in truth my eyes have grown dim to most of it. And maybe that's why adults write stories like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, because we adults need to be torn from our everyday routine in order to recapture that essential child-likeness we so often lose. In fact, I'm writing this down now, because I am sure that as I go through the coming weeks and months and years even this moment will begin to dim, and I hope that in reading this description years from now I will be able to recall perhaps just a portion of its joy.

"Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it." Mark 10:18