The author (left) with her sisters
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I had a magical childhood. Growing up in a tiny town where forests and cranberry bogs outnumbered paved surfaces and traffic lights, it was easy to believe in fairies in the glade and mysterious creatures lurking in the swamp. I devoured fantasy books at a young age, becoming lost in Norma Fox Mazer’s Saturday, the Twelfth of October and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. The adventures found within their pages seemed entirely plausible, and I awoke each day with eager eyes, waiting for my own enchanted journey to begin.
At age twelve, our family moved to the coast for one year, and a whole new magical world appeared, which ultimately inspired my novel, The Mermaid of Agawam Bay. We lived in Wareham, Massachusetts, and the bay was in our backyard—literally. The yard ended with a sea wall, and we had our own dock and a sailboat. There’s something about the ocean, the unseen force pushing and pulling the tides, leaving new treasures to be discovered each day when the water recedes… It filled me with awe and left me wondering about the creatures that lived unseen beneath the waves.
Much like Allie, the twelve-year-old protagonist in my book, I was teetering on the brink of adolescence, wanting to be more grown up and enjoy newfound independence but unwilling to relinquish my belief in the fantastic. It is to my parents’ credit that I was allowed to linger in that realm of in-between, neither rushed into teenage responsibility nor kept tied to my mother’s apron strings. My sisters and I were allowed to roam freely on our bicycles, adventuring and exploring the coastal forests and hidden beaches, with few restrictions beyond getting home in time for dinner.
Storytelling, a family pastime, actively engaged me in magical thinking. Family vacations spent on the sailboat, touring the waters near Nantucket Island, left us unplugged in the evenings, without the mindless entertainment of television. My mother invented a game that involved the whole family, and it’s a memory I treasure. She would start telling an adventure story, often including a family pet to guarantee our interest, and then would suddenly stop and point at one of us. Whoever was chosen would pick up the story from there, and the plotline would shift subtly as their own imaginings took over before they too chose a successor at will.
It was a wonderful, creative game, often taking a fantastical turn, which kept me fascinated with the possibilities. My mind would keep churning out different plotlines for the story late into the night, lying in the V-shaped berth with my sister as the waves rocked us gently to sleep. It nourished the seedling of magical belief in my soul that may have withered had I spent my childhood in a city with my eyes forced wide open.
Perhaps proximity to the ocean, ancient and mysterious, aids our belief in things that the logical mind denies. The undersea world may be one of the last strongholds of enigma and superstition, as even the most scientific minds admit how little we know of the ocean’s secrets. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 80 percent of the ocean is “undiscovered, unmapped, and unexplored.” Who’s to say what lurks in its depths?
A friend of mine from the Philippines demonstrates this point. Though she’s in her late fifties and has been in the U.S. for thirty years, she firmly believes in vampires and ghosts, sea serpents and giants. She will concede that perhaps they don’t exist here in America, but she is adamant they exist in the Philippines. A highly intelligent woman, she can debate with the most logical disbelievers, but it comes down to one thing: her belief system. She believes these creatures exist in her homeland, so for her, they do exist there. Notably, her belief in these threatening, supernatural creatures has a flip side. She wholeheartedly believes in the positive forces of the mystical realm as well: angels, sacred spirit animals, charms to protect loved ones. All these things exist in her world.
My friend seems far younger than she is, with amazing energy and zest for life, glowing skin, and a sparkle in her eyes. Could these be the rejuvenating effects of welcoming magic into her life? My vote is yes.
As for myself, I’m not sure when I paused my belief in magic. Perhaps it was a subtle change occurring slowly over time as I reached for that glittery, enticing crown of teenhood, crushing mermaids and the Loch Ness Monster beneath new, wobbly, high-heeled shoes. It’s a shame we’re pressured to give up our belief in the magical world just when we need it the most. Surviving first heartbreaks and new high schools would have been much easier with a little magic—a wish upon a star coming true, a fairy godmother ensuring an invitation to the prom.
I do remember when I began to open my mind to magic once again. A four-year-old boy showed me the way. I was babysitting for a friend and passing the time sitting on the porch stairs while he played in the sunshine. He laughed and frolicked with a kaleidoscope of butterflies, and it gave me joy to watch him. When he tired of chasing them, he returned to the steps, sat beside me, and asked why I was smiling. I told him that watching him with the butterflies made me happy.
“Me, too,” he said. “I knew them from before. They missed me.”
“Before when?” I asked, confused.
“From when I was a butterfly,” he said, adding casually, “you didn’t know me then.”
Trying to get a grasp on the conversation, I shook my head and said, “Keithie, you were never a butterfly. You were a baby in your mama’s tummy, and then you were born.”
“It was before then,” he insisted, stubbornly, and then countered my statement quite logically. “How would you know? You weren’t there.”
I started to speak and then stopped, considering. Who was I to say what had happened before he was born? Before we all were born? Who was I to discourage a belief in something magical?
Instead, I turned away to watch the butterflies in the sunshine and chose to let a tiny sliver of magic slide back into my belief system.
That was twenty-five years ago, and magic has come back into my life in full force. I don’t pretend to know what is possible and what is not. I can’t tell you if mermaids exist or if we’re all butterflies in a past life or if mysterious beings lurk in the Philippines. But I do know one thing, something that has been time-tested in my personal life. If you believe in something strongly enough, you can make it happen.
We are all given a magic wand: the strength of our will. It is our will that can change the future and shape our lives. And that, I believe, is magic in its purest form.
So, go ahead, believe in something fantastical. Allow for all possibilities. Never say never. You’ve got nothing to lose and an entire, magical world to gain.
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Read Chapter 2 of The Mermaid of Agawam Bay