Tag: Magic

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Magic, by Lewis

Do you believe in magic? 

Yeah. 
Believe in the magic in a young girl’s soul 
Believe in the magic of rock ‘n’ roll 
Believe in the magic that can set you free 
Ohhhh, talkin’ bout magic….

So goes the lyric by the smooth and silky Lovin’ Spoonful. According to Webster’s, “magic” is “the use of means (such as charms and spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces” or “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source” or “the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand”.

To answer Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ question, yes, I do believe there is power in music to set one’s soul free, so to speak, and it isn’t limited to rock ‘n’ roll or the soul of a young girl, for that matter. What Lovin’ Spoonful is singing about is the magic that is part of ordinary, everyday lives, not the magic of Webster’s dictionary. And, when push comes to shove, isn’t that the only kind that really matters?

I would like to tell you a story of how magic has affected my life. It begins shortly after my ex-wife, Jan, and I were married in 1972–six weeks after, to be precise. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I was working in the front yard of our home in Detroit. It was a warm day for late November. Jan came out of the house, obviously upset. She was bleeding rather heavily from her vagina. She had talked to her gynecologist, who recommended taking her to Brent, a private hospital, immediately.

What happened thereafter must be weighed in consideration of the fact that it was two months before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. It was less than a mile to Brent but for Jan it was as if she had stepped through a portal to hell. I did not witness any of the events I am about to describe. I only learned of them from Jan.

Within an hour of my leaving her off at the hospital, the orderlies were transferring her from the gurney to the examination table and dropped her on the floor. To add insult to injury, their main concern was for the well-being of the fetus; Jan was first-runner-up.

By this time, she had passed tissue as well as blood and was convinced that the fetus was not healthy. Nevertheless, she was instructed to lie perfectly still in the hospital bed. The doctor prescribed a sedative to calm her down but she only pretended to swallow the pill. When the nursing staff had left her room, she got out of bed and did pushups on the floor, hoping to abort, which, eventually, she did. The staff was none the wiser.

About a year later, Jan was pregnant again. As before, at about six weeks gestation, she began to bleed. That pregnancy also resulted in a miscarriage. Tests disclosed that Jan had a bifurcated uterus–a membrane separated it into two parts. That didn’t leave enough space for the fetus to develop normally. The doctor’s recommendation was surgery to remove the membrane. The odds of success were 50/50. We decided to go ahead with the procedure. Two weeks before the surgery was to happen, we learned that Jan was pregnant again, despite her being on the pill. We decided to take a wait-and-see approach to the fetus’ development.

This is where the magic began. Not only did the fetus go to term but developed into a 9-pound, 5-ounce baby girl, Laura. The delivery was not exactly “normal”, however. Yes, we had taken the “natural childbirth” and Lamaze classes but there is no way to plan or prepare for an umbilical cord that is wrapped around the baby’s neck. The obstetrician decided to induce birth early and use forceps. We had chosen a hospital, Hutzel Women’s Hospital in Detroit, that allowed the father to be present for the birth. I had planned for it but had not a clue as to the role I was about to play.

The birthing table, upon which Jan lay, was massive. I think it was made of marble or something equally heavy. The doctor was at one end, his forceps clamped on the baby’s head, a nurse was lying across Jan’s abdomen and I was holding onto the other end of the table. Nevertheless, the doctor was dragging the table with its cargo of three human adults across the delivery room floor by our daughter’s neck while Jan pushed as hard as she could. (Incidentally, my wife was about 5’8″ and 160 pounds.) I was afraid that our baby was going to be born in installments. But, no, she came out in one piece, her head a little flattened on the sides, slightly jaundiced, hoppin’ mad, and gorgeous to both her parents.

On my first visit to mother and daughter in the hospital, I donned the required gown. You know the type–they cover the front of you completely and tie in the back. Laura had been in an incubator for her jaundice. The nurse brought her in and handed her to Jan in the bed for feeding. After Laura had nursed for a while, Jan asked if I would like to hold her. I said “yes”, even though I had little-to-no experience with holding a live baby, especially one so small. After holding Laura to my shoulder for a few minutes, I handed her back to Jan.

As I was leaving, I removed the gown. There, near the shoulder of the dress shirt I wore to work, was a pea-sized spot of meconium, a baby’s first bowel movement. True, it’s sterile and has no particular smell, but I knew that I had been branded. My daughter had found an “outlet” for her anger at having to undergo such a rigorous birth and I knew she would have the upper hand for as long as we both lived.

On the night of Laura’s birth, as I drove home at about 5:00 AM, I turned on the car’s radio to WDET-FM, the public and classical radio station at the time. The streets were empty and as I merged onto I-75 for the 10-minute ride home, the interior of the car was filled with the sounds of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement. In the last section of that movement, the massive choir of over a hundred mixed voices rises to sing “Ode to Joy” in concert with the musicians. You have only to hear it once to know that MAGIC is happening. Only a genius who could not hear the sound of his own voice could have composed such glorious sounds. My heart, already swollen with pride, nearly burst.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But even better than Santa Claus, there is magic all around us all the time. It speaks to us only if we open our hearts to it and believe–believe that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, that we are given love in proportion to that which we give to others and that, above all, we must never lose faith either in ourselves or the blessed and precious world we have been given.

[P.S. Just a brief afterthought about the “magic” of childbirth–

I see nothing particularly remarkable about the male role in this process. The job of the sperm is two-fold: a) engage in the singularly manly pursuit of trying to outrace the other 100-200 million sperm to the egg and b) equally as manly, be the first to penetrate the hard outer layer of the egg, thus reaching its nucleus where the sperm’s genetic content merges with that of the egg. The life of the sperm thus reminds me of nothing more than of the leeches who attached themselves to the main character’s nether regions in the movie, Stand by Me–neither ennobling nor romantic.

What transpires within the uterus of the woman, however, is simply one magic trick after another. Nine months is longer than most men remain faithful. It’s uncomfortable enough that most men wouldn’t endure it unless they were being paid tens of thousands of dollars per month and on network television. Many of them are nowhere to be found when the nine months are up. Yet, they think they are entitled to make the rules as to whether the fetus must be allowed to go full-term. It’s as if the leech had a nine-month, no-breech lease on your groin. All of a sudden, the “magic” is gone.]

© 26 August 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Magic by Will Stanton

For some of you, please bear with me for just a moment. Today’s
topic is Magic, and what easier way to start the conversation than with some
references, using them simply as a preface to my main thoughts, references to
the currently very popular books and movies about Harry Potter. We can’t be
more magical than that. Anyone who knows him is well aware of his great magical
powers. After my preface, I’ll then tell you about a few of the things I would do if I possessed such great
powers.
Harry’s special powers came about by, first, his having been
born a wizard, not a mere mortal (or “muggle,” if you will.) Then he
honed his skills and learned many more by attending Hogwarts School. During
those several years, he also gained from practical experience utilizing his
magical powers. Then finally, author J.K. Rowling writes that Harry had
acquired the three instruments of great power: the Elder Wand (the most
powerful wand in the world), the Resurrection Stone (with which one can bring
people back to life), and the Invisibility Cloak (which hides the person
possessing it from Death.) Harry could be the most powerful wizard in the whole
world.
Rowling then writes that Harry, admirably demonstrating his
modesty and his wariness of any one person possessing such vast powers, tosses
aside the Resurrection Stone and then breaks and discards the Elder Wand. Good
old Harry, modest and of good character right to the end. Logically, however,
there was a precedent of someone possessing all three instruments of power
without having abused such powers, Harry’s own friend and headmaster Professor
Dumbledore. He had those great
powers but apparently did not abuse them.
Harry might not have been able to bring back all those good
people who died at the hands of the evil wizard, Lord Voldemort and his
minions, but at least he could have helped to heal the many injured and
traumatized. With a mere flick or two of his wand, he could have rebuilt
Hogwarts that had been left in shambles after the last confrontation with the
evil hordes. I can think of so many additional, magnanimous uses of such
powers.
Yes I admit, if I were Harry, I would have done a few minor
things for myself, too. Why not? For example, why not fix his eyesight so that
he would not have to go around with those eye glasses that always seemed to
become broken? Then, now that Voldemort is gone, he might get rid of the
lightning-scar on his forehead. There was no need to go around the rest of his
life with that mark of evil. And, how about unobtrusively growing an inch or
three, considering that Harry was so short? (I’m talking about his height.)
Now getting on with the supposed reality, this poor world seems
always to have been plagued with hordes of evil Lord Voldemort, those persons who
have caused death, trauma, and great destruction. Some start wars or otherwise
engage in various levels of violence. Crime is rampant. Lack of empathy and
civility permeate humankind. So many people seem to be prone to continually
creating toxic levels of fear, suspicion, intolerance, and hate merely by their
words, words that seem to drip with acid. One such character in Tolkien’s
“Lord of the Rings” was known as “Wormtongue,” a singularly
appropriate name. I guess that such evil is why Canada has outlawed one
American television network from opening an affiliate in Canada. Canada
actually has a law against networks lying. Amazing! I wish that the U.S. had
such a law and it were enforced. The world and our own nation suffer from such
people on a daily basis. Oh, how I would like to do something about that if
only I had great magical powers!
How I also would like to eliminate illiteracy, ignorance,
economic hardship, the sad decline of culture and society, including the
lamentable failure to raise a huge portion of our children so that they become
well prepared, happy, and productive members of society. There is so much that
needs attending to among humankind.
Even without the deficiencies and destructiveness of humankind,
the world itself has plenty of troubles: global warming, natural disasters,
disease, and possibly an asteroid or meteor crashing into the earth. The powers
of nature and the universe appear to be overwhelming; however, some good, solid
magic might be able to tone down the impact of such troubles, even if just a
little.
I know that we all are supposed to accept reality, to not engage
excessively in fantasy; yet it is easy to understand how many of us do see what is and wish how things could be, and then possibly become frustrated. There
are some people who do have sufficient abilities and truly influential
positions where they might make some positive differences. Unfortunately, such
positive people are few and far between. For the rest of us poor souls,
however, slipping into fantastic thoughts and wishes can become rather
attractive. Oh, Harry! Where are your powers when we need them?

© 22 August 2013 

About the Author 

I have had a life-long fascination with people
and their life stories.  I also realize
that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too
have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have
derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
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Mushrooms by Gillian

I thought of writing about mushrooms the other week when our topic was “Magic” but that led too inevitably to the psychedelic connection, which is far from the kind of magic I personally attach to mushrooms. They bring, for me, a nostalgia for the magic of innocent childhood days.

One of my very favorite things was when my mum and dad and I would go off together into the fields and woodlands to pick mushrooms. My vision of it is my mother with the basket on one arm and me swinging from the free hand between her and my dad. Perhaps this happened for just one instant, once, but you know how it goes. These things from the distant past expand themselves until they occupy vast stretches of time, and in my memory every time we went what we called “mushrooming,” I clasped each of them by the hand and swung my feet off the ground between them. We were not a touchy-feely kind of family and holding both their hands is a thing I cannot remember doing at other times or in other circumstances. It was just part of the magic of mushrooms.

Mostly we went in autumn, early in the morning, though I think occasionally we went at other times of the day and year. I associate mist with these morning jaunts, though again this might, in reality, have been just once. We looked for the mushrooms in open grassy meadows among sleepily grazing cows and sheep, and in glades of old oak trees where they grew happily on old rotting stumps. I have no idea what kind they were, though the ones from the fields were different from those in the trees. We worried little about accidentally picking poisonous ones, but I have no idea whether we were simply lucky or whether my parents had some learned or inherited knowledge about such things. Even I knew that you never picked toadstools, but they were easy to tell apart from mushrooms. Every child knew that fairies only live in toadstools; never in mushrooms! Though mushrooms do form what we always called “fairy rings,” growing in clear circles on the grass. Even when the mushrooms were not there, the rings still were visible as mounds or depressions in the grass, and as the mushrooms tended to grow again in that same ring, it was always a good place to look. These circles were sometimes just a yard or so across, but some were huge, ten to twenty feet in diameter. No-one knew why they grew in these circles so of course who else was to be held responsible but the little people? Stones the size of a pinkie or a fist or occasionally a football were also sometimes arranged in circles, always called “fairy rings” for the same reason. I loved to imagine these little creatures busily pushing and tugging at the rocks to get them arranged correctly, but was never too sure how they got the mushrooms to grow that way. Perhaps, I thought, they planted the wee seeds in a circular trench, the way my dad planted the potatoes in a straight trench.

For me, mushrooms were all about the gathering. I rather lost interest in them when we got the overflowing basket home, though I enjoyed eating them well enough. Had they been readily available in stores via mushroom farms as they are now, I probably would not have liked them, as many children do not, but back then they were rare enough to be attractive.

These days, sadly, in my opinion, picking mushrooms has, like so many things, lost its simplicity and become hugely complex. For one thing, of course, you can no longer wander freely over your neighbors’ fields and woods and help yourself to anything growing there. For another, mushrooms have fallen victim to TMI. We have way Too Much Information about them, as about most things. Did you know that there are an estimated 10,000 different species of mushrooms in North America; that a mushroom specialist is called a mycologist? Do you care?

On Google Earth, I find, you can see mushrooms from space, honest! Well, not the mushrooms themselves, but the tell-tale fairy rings left by some species. These rings are clearly visible satellite images, so you can select likely fields to visit whilst sitting at your computer. Talk about taking all the fun out of things! How can that possibly compare with tucking cold hands into Mom and Dad’s warm ones, watching the frost turn your breath to fog? How can finding something on the internet bring you memories to last a lifetime? And the rings themselves have some completely scientific explanation to do with fungus, and have lost all their magic. Worse than that, they sometimes appear on a pristine lawn and no amount of digging will destroy them so the Web recommends destroying them with chemicals. The poor old fairies are in big trouble in the modern world. And their fairy stone rings, apparently, are causes by the continuous winter freeze/thaw cycle pushing the rocks, not the little people at all, at all.

In Britain, where of course my childhood memories originate, mushrooms have become big business; not only via mushroom farms where they are cultivated en masse but also the picking of wild ones. Far from the “mushrooming” of my youth, it has now gone upscale and is invariably termed mushroom “foraging.” It seems that in order to partake of this, what at least used to be, simple pleasure one first needs to buy some expensive basket via one of many international online boutique such as fungi.com, (yes, there really is such a place!) along with an equally costly knife, the purpose of which escapes me as we always pulled them up and they exited the wet ground with a wonderfully pleasing plop. One then arms oneself with a variety of books and maps and charts so as to identify what one is searching for, and to identify the best place and time to search for it, so as not to waste valuable time and to avoid the hazard of poisoning oneself, even though only about one percent of all mushrooms can be lethal. And after all that, of course, you’ve run out of time and simply hire a “Mushroom Foraging Guide,” to lead you by the hand, instead. (Yes, there really are such people!)

Just reading about it all on WildMushroomsOnline.co.uk wore me out.

And d’you know what upset me most; the worst thing I discovered in my researches way down in the TMI depths? There is actually no scientific basis for differentiating so-called toadstools from mushrooms. They are just variations of the same thing. Oh no! Haven’t those poor fairies suffered enough? How are they to know where to live? I tell you one thing, if I ever suffered from little people envy, I’m cured. The last place I want to live in these challenging times is down at the bottom of the garden with the fairies!

And so the magic goes; the magic fantasies of fairies and the magic moments of mushrooming. It’s partly my age, of course, and partly the age. The world has changed so very much in the time that I have inhabited it, and I would be the last one to claim that it is all for the worse. Those days gone by were not necessarily better, but there’s no denying they were simpler. I have to wonder where the children of this fast-paced electronic era will find the magic, but I try to keep the faith that they will, and fortunately I shall never know.

© December 2013

About
the Author  


I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Magic by Ricky

No matter how hard we wish or dream or day-dream about the concept, “magic” does not exist. This is assuredly a very good thing because who among us is perfect enough to use such power wisely and judiciously. Certainly no one I know of or heard of. All people have thoughts and ideas of what they would do with the ability to utilize “magical” power. Some would attempt to do good deeds, some altruistic deeds, or to meet personal needs and to meet the needs of others. But also there would be those who abuse the potential magic offers by enriching themselves at the expense of others or to commit crimes against others or society at large. What if the Nazis, Stalin, homophobes, or even homosexuals had such power? Or worst yet religious leaders. How would you like to be a Methodist one minute and a Catholic (or some other religion) the next, always changing at random intervals as some religious fanatic uses his “magic”?  The result is chaos. Only in story books like Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, is there a “happy ending,” but still with the loss of “free will.”

No! No one can be trusted to wield such power. It would destroy our ability to choose our own destiny. I am the most perfect person I know, but I cannot even trust myself. If I cannot be trusted with such power, then no one should.

Stage magicians don’t have magic. They know only the “secrets” of sleight-of-hand, smoke, mirrors, and misdirection. They are the masters of illusion only.

Religious magic is usually referred to as “miracles”. While some reported miraculous events may be very hard, if not impossible, to believe, others are not so easily dismissed out of hand. While scientific analysis using knowledge gained over the centuries may explain the cause-and-effect relationship to certain mystical or miraculous occurrences which follow the laws of nature, there still remains the issue of the timing/occurrence of the miraculous event matching the recorded need at the precise moment. Undoubtedly, even those “coincidences” will be “scientifically” explained someday.

Too many coincidences indicate that some not understood “force” is at work. As the fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, said in Chapter Six of The Sign of Four, “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” The problem for us today is to determine exactly “what is impossible.” If it is true that “whatever man can imagine, he can do,” then ultimately, is anything really impossible?

Perhaps there is some reality to the “power of belief” that has yet to be scientifically proven as legitimate and fact.

There is one area where “magic” is real—within the usage of language and music to convey a specific aura or feeling. One can describe a sunrise or sunset using words which accurately and literally express the scene being viewed with a dry and boring text. But alter the words used just a little and add music and the word “magical” describing how it made you feel — and the impact does indeed swell within one’s breast.

This then is the real realm of magic; taking common everyday occurrences in nature or life and giving them the power to influence our lives for better or worse.

© 26 August 2013

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Magic by Gillian

Tossing this topic around in my head, I consistently found myself humming that tune from West Side Story, I like to be in America, OK by me in America.

When it finally pushed into my consciousness, I realized that my subconscious was telling me something (as, of course, it always is!) Coming to, being in, America. That is magic. It has been for so many people for so many years. I am using the word America, here, the same way it was used in the movie, to mean the United States; politically incorrect, I was always taught, as America North and South encompasses many countries, but nevertheless that is how it was used in that particular song.

Now, almost half a century since I first set foot on American soil, I can still feel the magic I felt then. And I wasn’t a refugee escaping political persecution, or poverty, or violence. At worst, I was simply looking for a better life than was then on offer in a struggling, and still, in many ways war torn, Europe.

I stepped onto Pier 41, I think it was, off the ocean liner Queen Elisabeth, on a cold, drizzzly, October morning, and felt the magic. This was where I was supposed to be! Not where I wanted to be, I had no experience to tell me that, I had been here ten seconds, but where I was meant to be. I truly felt it in my inner self, as if my soul had somehow been misplaced in a body born elsewhere, when clearly my soul belonged here. I can’t explain that feeling, and I don’t know if all or most immigrants feel that way or if I am the only one. I only know that it was clear to me, and that I still feel it.
After fifty years, of course I recognize that there is much Black Magic abroad in the country; that all is not well, at least as I see it, with the good old U.S. of A. But I knew it then. President Kennedy had recently been assassinated. Oh yes, I knew there was a Dark Side. And since then, in my opinion, the Dark Side has become darker and more insidious; or perhaps I have just become more aware. But my place, my belonging, has nothing to do with intellectual processes. It is simply my soul, whatever that word may mean, knowing where I belong.

August 2013

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Magic by Lewis


Do you
believe in magic? Yeah.

Believe in the magic in a young girl’s soul

Believe in the magic of rock ‘n’ roll
Believe in the magic that can set you free
Ohhhh, talkin’ bout magic….

So goes the lyric by the smooth and silky Lovin’ Spoonful. According to Webster’s, “magic” is “the use of means (such as charms and spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces” or “an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source” or “the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand.”

To answer Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ question, yes, I do believe there is power in music to set one’s soul free, so to speak, and it isn’t limited to rock ‘n’ roll or the soul of a young girl, for that matter. What Lovin’ Spoonful is singing about is the magic that is part of ordinary, everyday lives, not the magic of Webster’s dictionary. And, when push comes to shove, isn’t that the only kind that really matters?

I would like to tell you a story of how magic has affected my life. It begins shortly after my ex-wife, Jan, and I were married in 1972–six weeks after, to be precise. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I was working in the front yard of our home in Detroit. It was a warm day for late November. Jan came out of the house, obviously upset. She was bleeding rather heavily from her vagina. She had talked to her gynecologist, who recommended taking her to Brent, a private hospital, immediately.

What happened thereafter must be weighed in consideration of the fact that it was two months before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. It was less than a mile to Brent but for Jan it was as if she had stepped through a portal to hell. I did not witness any of the events I am about to describe. I only learned of them from Jan.

Within an hour of my leaving her off at the hospital, the orderlies were transferring her from the gurney to the examination table and dropped her on the floor. To add insult to injury, their main concern was for the well-being of the fetus; Jan was first-runner-up.

By this time, she had passed tissue as well as blood and was convinced that the fetus was not healthy. Nevertheless, she was instructed to lie perfectly still in the hospital bed. The doctor prescribed a sedative to calm her down but she only pretended to swallow the pill. When the nursing staff had left her room, she got out of bed and did push ups on the floor, hoping to abort, which, eventually, she did. The staff was none the wiser.

About a year later, Jan was pregnant again. As before, at about six weeks gestation, she began to bleed. That pregnancy also resulted in a miscarriage. Tests disclosed that Jan had a bifurcated uterus–a membrane separated it into two parts. That didn’t leave enough space for the fetus to develop normally. The doctor’s recommendation was surgery to remove the membrane. The odds of success were 50/50. We decided to go ahead with the procedure. Two weeks before the surgery was to happen, we learned that Jan was pregnant again, despite her being on the pill. We decided to take a wait-and-see approach to the fetus’ development.

This is where the magic began. Not only did the fetus go to term but developed into a 9-pound, 5-ounce baby girl, Laura. The delivery was not exactly “normal”, however. Yes, we had taken the “natural childbirth” and Lamaze classes but there is no way to plan or prepare for an umbilical cord that is wrapped around the baby’s neck. The obstetrician decided to induce birth early and use forceps. We had chosen a hospital, Hutzel Women’s Hospital in Detroit, that allowed the father to be present for the birth. I had planned for it but had not a clue as to the role I was about to play.

The birthing table, upon which Jan lay, was massive. I think it was made of marble or something equally heavy. The doctor was at one end, his forceps clamped on the baby’s head, a nurse was lying across Jan’s abdomen and I was holding onto the other end of the table. Nevertheless, the doctor was dragging the table with its cargo of three human adults across the delivery room floor by our daughter’s neck while Jan pushed as hard as she could. (Incidentally, my wife was about 5’8″ and 160 pounds.) I was afraid that our baby was going to be born in installments. But, no, she came out in one piece, her head a little flattened on the sides, slightly jaundiced, hoppin’ mad, and gorgeous to both her parents.

On my first visit to mother and daughter in the hospital, I donned the required gown. You know the type–they cover the front of you completely and tie in the back. Laura had been in an incubator for her jaundice. The nurse brought her in and handed her to Jan in the bed for feeding. After Laura had nursed for a while, Jan asked if I would like to hold her. I said “yes”, even though I had little-to-no experience with holding a live baby, especially one so small. After holding Laura to my shoulder for a few minutes, I handed her back to Jan.

As I was leaving, I removed the gown. There, near the shoulder of the dress shirt I wore to work, was a pea-sized spot of meconium, a baby’s first bowel movement. True, it’s sterile and has no particular smell, but I knew that I had been branded. My daughter had found an “outlet” for her anger at having to undergo such a rigorous birth and I knew she would have the upper hand for as long as we both lived.

On the night of Laura’s birth, as I drove home at about 5:00 AM, I turned on the car’s radio to WDET-FM, the public and classical radio station at the time. The streets were empty and as I merged onto I-75 for the 10-minute ride home, the interior of the car was filled with the sounds of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement. In the last section of that movement, the massive choir of over a hundred mixed voices rises to sing “Ode to Joy” in concert with the musicians. You have only to hear it once to know that MAGIC is happening. Only a genius who could not hear the sound of his own voice could have composed such glorious sounds. My heart, already swollen with pride, nearly burst.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But even better than Santa Claus, there is magic all around us all the time. It speaks to us only if we open our hearts to it and believe–believe that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, that we are given love in proportion to that which we give to others and that, above all, we must never lose faith either in ourselves or the blessed and precious world we have been given.

[P.S. Just a brief afterthought about the “magic” of childbirth.

I see nothing particularly remarkable about the male role in this process. The job of the sperm is two-fold: a) engage in the singularly manly pursuit of trying to outrace the other 100-200 million sperm to the egg and b) equally as manly, be the first to penetrate the hard outer layer of the egg, thus reaching its nucleus where the sperm’s genetic content merges with that of the egg. The life of the sperm thus reminds me of nothing more than of the leeches who attached themselves to the main character’s nether regions in the movie, Stand by Me–neither ennobling nor romantic.

What transpires within the uterus of the woman, however, is simply one magic trick after another. Nine months is longer than most men remain faithful. It’s uncomfortable enough that most men wouldn’t endure it unless they were being paid tens of thousands of dollars per month and on network television. Many of them are nowhere to be found when the nine months are up. Yet, they think they are entitled to make the rules as to whether the fetus must be allowed to go full-term. It’s as if the leech had a nine-month, no-breech lease on your groin. All of a sudden, the “magic” is gone.]


© 26 August 2013



About
the Author


I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.