My Mom Was a Nature Fairy

Saturday night I arrived late to our family campout, tired, smelling like carrot cake, and wearing a large baseball hat over my dirty hair.  It was mom's 60th birthday and I'd just about missed it.

But nobody seemed to mind: twelve kids were running wild, up the treehouse dad had just built, around the pond where a snapping turtle was hiding, and some were hanging from my oldest cousin's t-shirt in a game of touch football.  Adults were relaxing after passing around huge bowls of chili and starting into the burgers.  I was handed a beer and told to sit. So I did.  I caught Mr. Man and my mom standing along the sidelines, hands on hips, watching over everyone.  I could tell who was in charge.

Everybody in mom's family has always been close, always kept in touch, and always cared when good and bad things happen.  Mom turning 60 was the perfect reason for getting together.  Some parked trailers on their large property, some "camped" inside.  It was an all-out eating fest, and I certainly did my part.

As everything panned out the way mom secretly orchestrated it, there was one gift she wasn't expecting.

You need to understand first that before I knew her, mom was a fairy.  If you read any books on the Neverland Fairies, she would be on the page about nature fairies.  Mom knows every plant and flower, both in latin and layman's terms, and can magically grow any of them.  She walks through the woods greeting the winter berries and looking for bird tracks to see who's visited the area.  Ultimately, she searches for the magic.

When she is with my kids, she pulls them into her imaginative play.  They become characters in a story of her creation, and they sip their tea, draw their maps, and spend their millions until she heads out the door and the bubble of wonder melts away.

Once, when my son was very young, I found the magic.  It was at the edge of a ball field were the grass was long and the weeping willows hung so low they formed a green ivy-covered cave.  Tiny bugs jumped along, dandelion seeds floated through the air and I felt a warm shiver up my spine.  Fairies were in this place.  I knew it.  And I thought of mom.

So Saturday night when she called me away from the campfire, I wasn't surprised that she'd found something full of wonder.  What we saw no one (even in 65 years) had ever seen before.

Back behind the barn, whether we turned left or right, or walked the length of the field, we were surrounded by hundreds of lightning bugs.  Fireflies.  It was a sight to behold.  Dancing, shining, enjoying the nighttime, it was as if fairies were at work everywhere, using the firefly lights to shine the way.  While we were having our family reunion on one side of the barn, the fairy world was having a family gathering on the other side.

"It's just like pixie dust!" someone said.  A sideways look at mom and you knew she wanted to run out there, greeting each and every one of them.

So here's to mom on her birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mom.  May you never lose the magic.

We love you!