My husband and I are scientists by profession and our careers revolve around hard facts and rigorous evidence. In my private life, however, I dream of fairies and wizards and ‘vegetarian’ vampires. I cling to old Jewish superstitions like a character from “Fiddler on the Roof” (ptoo ptoo, I should never meet the same fate). In short, as long as it isn’t harmful to my health or the health of those I love, I do believe in magic. It is one aspect of childhood with which I refuse to part. For my daughters Sloane and Tanys, I strive to sprinkle pixie dust among the chess lessons and flash cards of a typical NYC childhood; not so much a Tiger Mom as a Tiger Lily Mom.
From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, New York City is a magical place—giant balloons fill the sky during the Macy’s Parade, glowing icicles line Madison Avenue and overlarge diamonds sparkle on the facades of jewelry emporiums on 5th, store windows transform in to fantasy tableaux, you can’t swing a reindeer without hitting a performance of “The Nutcracker,” hordes of North Pole residents crowd the sidewalks during SantaCon, and a giant sparkling tree lords over it all.
One year I took the girls to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular. Sloane already had a Jew’s guilty discomfort with Christmas and said of the Rockettes’ reindeer kick line: “Well, it kind of looks like a menorah.” Tanys, one to embrace anything that ends in presents, exclaimed, after the 3-D opening number: “Now I believe in Santa Claus!”
After years of vicariously living through Christian friends’ Elf on the Shelf shenanigans, the Mensch on the Bench came in to our lives. My girls were only too willing to believe, or pretend to believe, that he somehow changed locations and outfits each night by some unknown force. With a wink and a nudge each morning they would exclaim: “The Mensch is frozen in carbonite,” or: “The Mensch is on a zipline,” or: “The Mensch is playing chess!” (Yes, even the Mensch has a Tiger Mom). Though he does not have the Big Brother spying powers of the Elf and is not tied to presents per se, they would say thing like: “We can’t fight in front of the Mensch!” If that isn’t magical, I don’t know what is.
My hopes for the Tooth Fairy, the most universal and frequent magical presence in a child’s life, were almost cut tragically short. Sloane was sleeping at her best friends’ home and caught their mom exchanging a tooth for money in the middle of the night. The next morning she dejectedly said: “I saw Alice. I know there is no tooth fairy. It’s the mom or the dad.” I looked her straight in the eye and said: “Look, I am going to tell you something I am really not supposed to tell you but here goes—Alice is the Tooth Fairy.” I then spun a tale of various beautiful women all across the globe, each responsible for a particular territory, much like drug reps. Sloane bought it hook, line, and sinker; she then proceeded to tell other children this “secret” and Alice gamely plays along, writing letters to children she doesn’t know when they lose a first tooth. Sloane is on to the ruse now, but she had a good extra two or three years of magic, and she keeps the story going for her little sister and young cousins.
Sometimes the magical, and the spiritual, conflict in a household that is equal parts Star Wars and NASA geek. Our girls go to a pluralistic Jewish day school and learn the Old Testament along with secular studies. In kindergarten, Sloane had a deep metaphysical struggle: “Which is true, Mummy—Adam and Eve or the dinosaurs?” Tanys, however, must have internalized the Richard Dawkins book she accidentally gnawed on as a baby: “These ten plagues? They do not sound true!”
We try our best to separate fact and fiction, metaphor from mitochondria, without losing that twinkle in our eyes or dimming theirs. After all, what is parenting but watching magic in action – an egg and a sperm meet, DNA entwines, cell divide, and a whole new person comes in to the world, learns to talk and walk, read and write, fall in love, and start the cycle all over again? Magic is all that is possible and impossible; so is childhood. It is a miracle we witness every day and too often fail to appreciate.
So as the season of miracles ends and we face the cold, hard reality of January, remember to enjoy your magical children, even when they seem to be using dark magic on your sanity. Those moments, like the batteries in the recently opened presents, do not come even close to lasting long enough.
Lani Serota is the mother of two daughters, besotted wife, sleep aficionado (both her own and that of children), and celebrity child name enthusiast who loves a good giggle. When she is not working, taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer, or procrastinating, she loves to write. Lani lives with her husband and daughters on the Upper East Side.
