Chasing Wonder

and finding magic.

This is what I wrote on my original about page for ‘Ordinary Magic’. I‘m sharing this with you today because this is where I started from - this is what lay behind everything I have written over the last two years. The underlying themes here are still very relevant, and while the name of my publication has changed, these themes will carry on.

---

When I was young, my mother would pull us out of bed, 2 AM sometimes, in the chilly darkness. She would slip into our room with an excited whisper and gently shake us awake “Come see the moon! It’s so beautiful!” We’d race down the stairs and out onto the deck, sometimes stopping for a jacket and boots. We’d stand under the light of the full moon for a moment, listening to my mom talk about why it was so big and full that night.

My mother chased wonder. She knew that out there, beyond the walls of our home, the screens on our walls and in our pockets, lay something incredibly magical and she knew we needed to see it.

One morning my own children woke up early, really early. The kind of early that makes you question your life choices. I opened the window to see what it was like outside and my son noticed the first signs of the sun rising. "Mom look at the sun, look at the sun!"

The clouds had just started to turn from the dark blue of nighttime to a deep orange. As I looked out the window I was struck by that childhood memory of my own mother whisking us outside in the middle of the night to catch a glimpse of something wonderful, and I sprang into action. We scrambled into snowsuits and boots and went for a sunrise walk. Both kids were very quiet, very content wrapped in a blanket as we walked. The street was really quiet, there was the faintest of breezes. The clouds still slowly shifting from that deep bluey orange of early dawn to warm yellows and reds, spreading across the entire horizon. My son had lots of questions, as usual, why is the sun rising, when will it get dark again and why is the sky turning yellow? In all his questions there was an air of excited curiosity, a joy in discovering something new.

Our children are born with this sense of wonder, this ability to experience awe. As we grow, I think we forget how important and valuable wonder is. We need those experiences immersed in the wild beauty of our earth, to keep us grounded in our bodies, to remind us what really matters, to fill our lungs with air and just marvel at something as ordinary as the color of the sky.

I am grateful for my mother showing me how to wonder, encouraging me to explore, even as a tired parent, in the wee hours of the morning.

It is these moments of wonder that keep me moving through waves of grief - grief for the loss of my sister too soon, grief at the end of my marriage and the reality of being a single mom. I believe it is the work of this life, to find the wonder and cultivate the beauty so that we can be resilient and of service to others in times of upheaval.

I choose to chase wonder(slowly). I choose to wonder at the world, alongside my children. I choose to cultivate creativity and capture moments of ordinary magic. We spend time soaking in slow mornings and deep cups of tea. Sharing conversation under tall trees and enjoying long, leisurely walks by the river. We breathe in and out with the seasons, finding magic in the soap bubbles in the bathtub. We chase wonder and uncover magic in our own ordinary lives, we carry on, even when life is heavy and the wonder we bring from this moment into the next sustains us.