June-fairy

I was winding down a phone conversation with a friend. We had been talking about my upcoming trip to New England (an annual pilgrimage), and fondly remembering the old days when I believed in fairies.

"I want to believe again," I said. "But I've lost... I don't know... perhaps I can't. It's been such a very growing-up sort of eighteen months." And it has---months of heaviness, of great effort, of learning about good cheer and steadfastness and hope while the weight is pressing down.

"I need to play again," I told my friend. "The weight is lifted now, more or less. My family is through the crisis. Now I need to remember how to laugh."
I heard the smile in her voice. "Yeah, you were kind of in a daze last semester, more than half not here."
"I was working so hard. I had no time to play."
"But can't you? Can't you play again?"
"I don't know," I said again. "But I want to try."

As I sat talking to her on our front step, the summer twilight piled around me, blue and more blue. Flowers in my mother's garden began to seem as pale stars. Fireflies appeared---one quite close---like yellow throbbing diamonds hearted with fire. A graceful deer stood in the shadows across the street. Mama is annoyed with them because they eat her June lilies.

"Perhaps," I thought to myself, "I could make up garden fairies."

We talked a little longer, lingering, our voices vibrant on the small electric cell phones. I told her about my sea, about the lighthouse-like home where we always stay with my grandparents, about sailing and eating lobsters, about running on the private beach early every morning, when there was nothing but myself and the sea....

"I shall be just passionate for a week and a half," I told her. "Nothing but clean passion. Oh, I love the sea! If I could marry a merman, I would do it."

"There!" She cried, "you can still be magic!"
"That was magic?"
"I heard it in your voice."

I laughed. I remembered how to laugh. And I thought, "I will make a June-fairy. I will make a summer fairy. I feel the magic returning. I remember..."

"And now the magic will be only deeper," I told her, "because I have gone through this hard time. It will be better now."

We hung up. I stayed there on the front step a few more moments, soaking in the night. I wanted to fill my bones with it, until they became crystal, and my skin grew silver, and my blood fire---but radiant, gently fierce fire---not the fire that burns you up, but the one that warms you.

I remember....

And I feel again. I'm hungry again. I am ready to make a new fairy.