Whenever Avella asks me this question, part of me clenches. But I outwardly, cheerily respond in the positive. "Mm Hm!" I hum, finding something that suddenly needs attention on the stove. I try nobly to mask the twinge of guilt I feel at not being entirely honest, and I pray she doesn't probe much further as I deftly change the subject. If I were to respond truthfully, I would have to tell her that I do not believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies any more than I believe in water. Or the ground I walk on. Or the air I breathe. Or the warmth of fire. What is there to believe? I simply know their existence to be truth. Eight years old feels different. I am noticing that her cheeks no longer have their pink rotundness. Her laughter bubbles a little less innocently -- it seems now to carry a subtle desire to make others laugh as well. She is at a threshold where she has absorbed just enough of the grittier things of the world to tip the scales away from that sweet cocoon of childhood. In 2nd grade they are immersed in the world of saints -- those souls who contrast most sharply the world's downward pull into inertia and darkness. To understand their significance, some part of our children must understand that to which these great beings stand in opposition. And from the world of the saints, they wander into the world of those trickster animals in Native American tales and moralistic fables. Those earthy characters who must always choose wrong for us to viscerally grasp the "why" of choosing right. Certainly without the metacognitive awareness of it, our children are being shown the whole spectrum of possibilities for human behavior -- for their behavior. From animalistic to angelic. And... they still believe in fairies. What an interesting time.
What is my struggle here? As I look at my daughter, and see the threshold she now straddles, I feel the path she must walk, alone. I recall so clearly my vicious clinging to my belief in magic at this same age. It became more desperate when my sister shook my Santa-cloak with her smug, worldly knowledge, dangled before me in sing-song taunting. (She still feels terrible about that, I must add.) I remember well how the world of the unseen was more real to me than so-called reality, and I wanted to protect that awareness -- against sisters, friends, and strangers -- doubts in any guise. And so I pledged to myself, looking out of the window in the sleeping silence of a moonlit winter night, to keep my faith in magical worlds alive and strong until the ripe age of 21 (the limit of my imaginative capacity to conceptualize old-age). Then, I thought, *then* I would be rewarded with the key to infinity.
Well, suffice it to say, my 21st birthday was far from magical by eight year-old standards. In fact, by that time, most of the deeds we hope those not-clever-enough animals in the fables won't do, were done. And the darkness those saints so sharply contrast, was dark. Life deals blows. And I know that I felt it coming when I made that desperate pledge in the night. If I hadn't, no pledge would have been necessary. Rather than finding the key to infinity, I found the key to oblivion. I was quite far from that which, in my childhood, I held more precious to me than anything. But, it wasn't gone.
I met with Mr. Gebeau today, and we discussed the flow of the year for the children. They started with saints -- lots and lots of saints. And they've moved to the animals with all of their mishaps and misfortunes. "But," he added, "we're going back to the saints again after this -- we'll finish the year out with saints." Maybe that is my struggle. We start in a more angelic place, as infants and children. A more unconsciously-angelic place, perhaps -- still shimmering naturally from our most recent astral sojourns. But we are then all pulled into the earthiness of being human, where we have to make difficult choices. A lot. Every day. And the animal nature rears up sometimes uncontrollably. And we have to learn how to steer this complex ship called "me" through the choppy waters called "world". But we are neither all "of the world," or all "of the spirit." We are both. Each one determining how near to Saint we go, or how near to Coyote.
I had to lose sight of my childish belief in fairies before I could know the truth of their existence. I had to walk through terrible darkness, and act in animalish ways, to grasp the significance of choosing to carry light. Because, I realize even now, we are all born with the potential to become saints. It is our choice whether we will develop that potential or share the fate of the fables' protagonists. What my daughter calls fairies, I have grown to embrace as the play of the Divine that dances invisibly through the mundanity of life-as-we-know-it. Through determined plowing of the soil of silence, I hear the voices and feel the presence of multifarious beings of light that thrive in our positive thoughts and die in poisonous environments of negativity. These are no longer things I need to profess belief in. I do not need to cling to them for fear of threatening "truths". I do not need categorical proofs, nor do I need to hear supportive voices to bolster my position. Through my journey, from light, through darkness, and back toward light, I am where I started, but belief has transformed to knowing.
This is my struggle. As I watch my daughter on the threshold of this journey. As I hear her ask me if I believe in fairies, knowing that behind this question is the doubt that must act itself out before it becomes lasting knowledge. I cannot say no, yet I cannot fully say yes. But what I can do, what I need to do, for her, is to let her go. Go into her own journey. Into the crushing loss of belief. Into darkness. For on the other side of that darkness, I know: the number of fairies waiting for her, is infinite.
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