I Do Believe in Fairies!

Without wishing to sound about a hundred years old (I’m 33); my childhood was in the time before computers and IPhones, before the X-Box and Nintendo DS.  My childhood was made up of story books and playing in the garden, of making up stories and watching Peter Pan.  I was convinced that fairies were real and that if I believed hard enough, they would magically appear. 

I’m not sure if I ever really believed in Father Christmas or anything along those lines (baby atheist in the making?) but I wholehearted believed that magic was real, if I could only find it. 

You are allowed to think like that when you are a young child.  I wish we still did.  I miss that feeling of absolute certainty in my heart that anything was possible, if you only believed it, even fairies.

Something happened this weekend that took me right back to my old five year old self, and it was nothing short of magical.  I went to the park this weekend with my dogs and whilst walking along a leaf covered pathway, with trees on each side of me I suddenly stopped.  Right in front of my eyes was a leaf, immobile in mid air, floating as if by magic.

Although my logical brain soon explained it as hanging from an unseen spider thread, for those fifteen seconds before I just gazed upon that leaf in total wonderment and happiness.  The five year old little girl that was once me was shouting inside me “It’s real, it’s real!” and jumping up and down. 

When I realised that it must be hanging from a spider’s threat a small part of me was gutted.  I didn’t want the logical explanation.  That tiny part of me that believed in fairies at five years old wanted it to be real.  But, of course, it wasn’t.

Now at 33 of course I don’t still believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden or that leaves can magically float in the air.  I’m far too cynical.  But you know what?  Part of me wishes I still did.  Life was far less complicated then.

So, just this once, as a salute to the five year old me,

 

There, that feels much better.