It worked like magic

It Worked Like Magic

As Jeff was the only member of his family who lived in the same town as his grandparents, a sorrowful task was left to him and to his wife Belinda to perform. His grandparents had died just a week before in a car crash – not their fault, crazy driver became impatient with their going the speed limit, failed in trying to pass them.  

Jeff had been the one to arrange the funeral, and now he had to do this second thing. It would be a sad task indeed, as he had always been very close to his grandparents, his mother’s parents.  They raised him as much, perhaps more than his parents had done. They had helped him through several difficult stages of life, as a child, a teenager, and as a young man. Now he and his wife Belinda (they had leant him their car on his first date with her) had to go through the attic of the old house and rescue what should be saved, and trash what should be thrown out or donated. It wasn’t the time taken that bothered him about this task. What hit him the hardest would be having to choose what was to be considered trash. He didn’t feel he would be completely able to make that kind of decision, as everything about his grandparents held a very special kind of magic to him. He hoped that his wife would help him with the hard choices when he didn’t have the heart to condemn objects associated with his grandparents to leave the family.

His grandparents had been circus performers throughout most of their lives, magicians mostly. and they had encouraged his childhood belief in magic. Both of them could do tricks that the child that he was could not believe would be achieved through any other means than by pure magic. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he fundamentally ended his complete belief in magic. And yet, when he went to the last series of performances put on by his grandparents, he wasn’t quite so sure that magic did not exist. His adult self still wondered how they pulled off some of those tricks, but in the mystery there was a kind of mystical charm that he did not want to completely let go of.

Finding His Childhood in the Attic

Entering his grandparents home without them being there to greet him was tough for Jeffrey. When he and his wife went up the stairs, he opened the door slowly, afraid of what he would see and not see in the attic.  He experienced both happy surprise and tears of sadness when he saw so many items in the attic that he remembered well from when he was a child. There was the first book he had ever read. It was his grandparents who convinced him that he had the ability to do so. He hadn’t believed that it was possible, until, wielding their magical abilities, which he did firmly believe in, they convinced him that through their influence he had gained the ability.  He read it out loud to them the first couple of times.

Then he discovered what he knew to be very his first pair of tie-up shoes. After he had failed many times to tie them up,  his grandparents helped him tie them up, purely physically at first. This was followed by a magic touch, that had completely convinced him that he could tie them up by himself.  His fingers rather magically performed a task that had been beyond their capability before. When he grew out of those shoes, his grandparents asked to keep them, which he gladly agreed upon.

 Then there was his toy piano, upon which he first learned to play the instrument that led him later on to becoming a successful musician, about whom it was often said that he had ‘magic fingers.’  Identifying the notes on the charts involved decoding a kind of mystery language before his grandparents helped make the mystery disappear into clarity with one of the tricks of their trade. 

Then there was the stuffed dog that resembled his first dog, a cocker spaniel named ‘Cindy’, short for Cinderella, that his grandparents bought for him and his sisters, much to his parents’ great surprise, and a bit of a shock.  They had taught him not to fear the dog, which was his first reaction, but to regard her as a friend. When he was six, and the dog died, being hit by a car, his grandparents gave him the stuffed animal that looked so much like her, it almost seemed to him that the dog had never died. He slept with the stuffed replica for a year. They told him that with a simple gesture of a magic wand, the dog’s spirit would remain in the stuffed version of her for a year. She remained in his room for years after that until he mistakenly left it behind when he was going to live in university residence, and his grandparents, knowing that their daughter and son-in-law were not as sentimental as their son, took it to their home when Jeff’s parents moved out of their house and into a condominium.

Jeff picked up the stuffed dog and held it tightly to his chest in the way he had done when he had slept with it.

Not long afterwards, he found the greatest prize of all: his grandparents’ magic wand.

“I can’t believe it. This is my grandparents’ magic wand, the one that they used to pull off some of their more spectacular magic tricks with. 

They also taught me, gave me confidence, using this magic wand, I could do anything – read a book, play the piano, and even tie up my shoes, although not always well concerning the latter.”

“I’ve seen that last bit. Touch me with the wand.”

“Okay, sure, but it won’t help you playing the piano.”

He touches her with the wand on both shoulders in sequence, looking very serious.

“Jeff, I’m pregnant”

“I think that that is asking too much of the wand.”

“No, Jeff, I did the test this morning, and it was positive. After a year’s trying and trying it has finally happened. I was waiting for the right time and place to tell you. And this is a magical moment. Your grandparents would be pleased that I t