Sometimes I wonder what keeps the stars apart, what keeps the moon from crashing into the ocean, what keeps the world rotating. I don't want someone to give me a textbook answer. That I can find for myself. I don't want anyone to give me an answer at all. I just want to wonder about it, to think about all the possibilities for magic there are in the world. Not hocus pocus, alakazam magic; just small occurrences of everyday magic like falling in love and learning something new but unimportant and tasting all the flavors of the rainbow in one drop of snow on the tongue. Does anyone do that anymore? There's a lot of people on earth, but are they in it? Do they see the tiny purple blooms at the side of the road from behind the wheel of whatever vehicle they have to work 50+ hours a week just to afford the monthly payment? Do they see the baby in its mother's arms in the checkout lane at the grocery store and realize how amazing new life is? Do they see the rain and marvel at the length of its journey before it falls on their shoulders? Or are they just going the shortest, fastest route possible to their workplaces, closed off from the world they live in because their lives are filled with orthodontist appointments and court dates and soccer practice and fast food lanes? Sometimes I just want to blow a big whistle and stop all the to-ing and fro-ing. I want people to take off their shoes and walk barefoot in the park grass and stand in the wind and wade in the ocean waves and remember a time not so far distant when we played hopscotch on the sidewalks in front of our houses and knew our neighbor's names and what they were having for dinner and stood on our father's boots while he danced us in circles and loved our third-grade teachers and only watched television on Ed Sullivan night and Disney Sunday Movie night. Sometimes I think I'm the only one alive who still remembers Sing Along With Mitch and having crushes on boys without even thinking about sex and food that doesn't come in boxes or bags marked No Fat, Low Fat, Low Carb, No Carb, Lite, and Virtually Inedible. The stars are closing in. The moon is dipping low. The world is spinning without purpose. Sometimes I think the castaways didn't know how lucky they were to be isolated on Gilligan's Island.

Once upon a time when I was a little girl with my nose in any book of fairy tales I could find, I ran across a story of mermaids. I read about mermen, or selkies, who were greatly desired by human women. The only way to be accepted into the undersea world for a human woman was to stand at the shore and drop seven tears into the ocean before her selkie would take her into the deep with him. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I found many opportunities to try this, believing that life under the sea would be so much more beautiful than life on shore. But I could never get those seven separate tears to drop, plop plop plop, just so, one by one, as the legend required. Ever since first reading this story I've been fascinated with the whole idea of mermaids. When I die, if reincarnation exists, I want to come back as a mermaid. Then I'd search until I found Amelia Earhart and she and I would explore the ocean valleys together. We would eat lobster every day and drape ourselves with designer seaweed and loot shipwrecks for the finest treasures. She would teach me how to fly through the currents and I would teach her how to race with the dolphins. If only I could get those seven tears to drop just so.