I feel safe in the twin assumptions that, first, my child does not yet know how to read, and second, that he does not know the address of my webpage.  I would like to make the assertion that he doesn’t know how to get on the internet, but the fact that he has mastered my iPhone would put that to the lie.  

So, I feel rather confident in sharing a secret.  My husband and I have altered our weekend plans to give Harry a surprise.  I managed to get my hands on tickets to Disney on Ice for half the ticket price.  Not only tickets, but FIFTH ROW tickets.  On the lower level.  

The time you have where they still believe in magic is so short.  It will not be long before skaters in foam character suits will cease to enthrall and will become simply people in poorly-ventilated costumes.  He is already showing signs that his age of enchantment will be fleeting.  I want him to have the magic while he can.

But I often wonder if I am being a bit disingenous, even with myself.  I am not so sure that it is my desire to give him these technicolor memories, as it is my own desire to relive that moment in time when life was simpler, and possiblities were so limitless.  It isn’t a startling revelation that we relive our childhoods vicariously through our children.  That is so patently obvious and accepted enough to be almost trite.

No, the surprise is not the desire itself, but the intensity of the pang of loss, and the compulsion, bordering on fanatic, to return to a single moment of fantastical awe without that willful, conscious, suspension of disbelief that we as adults must make to immerse ourselves in the beautiful fictions.

I have spent my life in the pursuit of the man behind the curtain, in pulling back the veil on the wonders of nature, and with few exceptions I have found that the view behind the surface to be even more wonderful, more complex, more inspiring, than the mystery.  As Hamlet says “There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy…”.  But isn’t that the gist of it?  That longing?  No matter how amazing the reality, we reach for that little bit more.  

I can’t say that I would trade that glimpse into the workings of the Universe to have remained a perpetual child, no matter how the complexity and the demands of my adult life create that longing.

But sometimes, the recipe for the serene soul is just a little but of unadulterated Mickey Mouse.