Here, gone, to come again, Christmas, the day, is over. We watched the sleepy two-year old work to process the toys under the tree, toys that weren’t there when he went to sleep the night before.  Next year he might have a thread of memory that teases him when the talk turns to Santa Claus. By four, he will have some sense of anticipation.  At five, he will be sick with excitement.  We can’t decide if that is a good or bad thing to do that to kids. 

I fall firmly on the side of enchantment.  Little ones live in a magical world as it is.  The way they hide behind curtains, peeking out to see if you can see them. You can look them right in the eye and ask, “Where is Cy?” And he collapses in giggles because, of course, he is right there, and you don’t even know it.

The magic fades with time, and they begin to understand such things as accommodation and conservation, the manifestation of which means it dawns on them they can’t fit into a drawer when playing hide and seek. While they never try to actually hide in the desk, when you pull open a small drawer and ask if they are in there, they solemnly shake their heads, knowing they aren’t there, but might have been. 

There comes a time when they will say, out loud, even though it spoils the game, “I can’t fit in a drawer,” and the game, and the child, are changed forever. 

New kinds of magic emerge. Passing an exam you thought surely you failed. 

Windfalls as small as a dollar bill on the ground, an unexpected gift, dodging metaphorical bullets when the car makes a gruesome noise and it turns out to be a small fix, the disaster of disease that goes into remission, or goes away entirely.  Logical explanations for all of this, of course, but also, small magic, an enchantment, just around the edges. 

It is a secret of mine, the way I prefer enchantment to a cold hard fact. My nature is to understand the world, not control it, so I spend a great deal of time reading and wondering and wooling things over.  I arrive at working theories, but flexible ones, always open to new information.  But first, always first, I think it is magic at play, or at the very least, serendipity. 

I gave up resolutions years ago because I talked too much about them and somehow all that strutting took the wind out their sails.  This year, as odd as the past few months have been, with family additions and home additions and everyone run down and tired and worried for the world and the grocery bill, I cast about for some magic, some enchantment to pull me into the New Year. 

Because I have decided to embrace enchantment.  Just now, as I write these words, I realize how it has gone missing.  Enchantment is defined as a great feeling of pleasure and delight. Surely this isn’t too hard to find, even in the everyday.  I was enchanted Christmas Eve, out for last minute shopping. Rushing around and pushing my cart, I caught a snippet of conversation between a father and his children. 

As they passed around a bottle–perfume, bath oil, I don’t know–the dad said, “Your mom likes to smell this”  and I was enchanted.  All of them out to find something to please her, the intimate way he knew her, her desires, even in the simplest thing, a lemon balm bath oil, or was it lavender, no matter.  He knew.  The children agreed. 

I kept that image for the rest of the day. 

And it gave me pleasure. 

So.  No resolutions, then, but a different sort of paying attention. An opening up, even on hard days, gray days, the simple joy of finding a certain kind of magic.