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Unforgotten Magic
I did my taxes on Saturday. Long form 1040, the whole thing, using a legal pad and my laptop to figure the whole thing out. The last two years, since separating from Daphne, I've used Mom's copy of Turbotax and let the computer do all the heavy lifting. This year Mom's working for a tax preparer's office, and she didn't need to buy Turbotax. I wasn't willing to spend the money on it myself, even though my taxes are more complicated by far this year than they have been ever before. I knew I had to itemize my deductions because of my medical bills, donating the old station wagon to charity, and all that. It looked like a major pain in the ass; I really didn't want to deal with it, even though I knew I was getting money back.
Since I did my taxes by computer last year, the IRS didn't send me paper tax forms this year; I had to go to the library to get them. Twice, actually; the first time Monday on the way home from work, and then again Saturday afternoon to get all the schedules and forms I hadn't realized I needed the first time.
The Monday trip was my first visit to the San Lorenzo Public Library in maybe four years. It hadn't changed much at all. I'd visited it for the first time in 1980, and except for more computers, it hadn't changed appreciably over the years. It felt older, of course, and that made everything seem different. I scanned the science fiction shelves I had once known so well, and saw many new titles, and many old friends besides. Somehow the whole thing seemed darker, slightly more shopworn, less welcoming than before.
It was older, and I was older, and that explained everything, I thought. Eighteen years had worn the familiarity off the old place.
When I went back Saturday, I realized that I'd been wrong.
The library is a vastly different place on a Saturday afternoon than it is on a Monday evening. As soon as I pulled into the lot, I could see I was mistaken. The parking lot was nearly full, as it should have been. The skies were cloudy yet cheerful, and the breezes blew happily. As they should have.
Getting out of the car, I walked up the broad paved path which slopes up gently to the library's entrance. After about four steps, the old locks of my memory broke. No, they were reborn.
Between the parking lot and the broad paved path is a line of tall shady trees. I'm lousy with the names of trees, so I have never known what they were. I didn't need to. Their branches shifted welcomingly that afternoon, just as they had those merry days when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, those many Saturday afternoons I had walked up this same path, or ridden my purple bicycle, carrying with me a green plastic file box which I still have to this day, a box filled with many manila folders, hardcover Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, dice, pencils. The breeze picked up, and I could smell the Winchell's donuts baking! Three twists and a large Dr. Pepper, lunch for two bucks, enough sugar to sustain the fantasies of a boy for the five hours of role playing games, the smell of a place which didn't really exist anymore -- they tore down the old tiny Winchell's on the corner, down the other path from the library, into the post office parking lot, next to the old men's suit outlet; they tore it down and rebuilt it newer and shinier and less friendly at the opposite corner. But it smelled just the way it had all those years ago. The swings on the playground, on the other side of the broad paved path, the playground which had the bike racks where that purple bicycle had been stolen once, but recovered miraculously fifteen minutes later and five blocks away; those swings squeaked just the same. The angle of the shadows from the peaked roof over the glass library doors, the glint of the pavement under my feet, it had not one bit of it changed in eighteen years.
I craned my neck to see if anyone had shown up early. You know, the old gang; Greg Herlein, my favorite Dungeon Master, handsome, with the wavy blond hair and the glasses, and the winning smile; his best buddy, Rich Schock, the "stoner," always in his green canvas army jacket, long dark hair, squirrel cheeks and mischievous eyes; Harry Little, tall, blond, gentle; many, many more, all still teenagers, all gathering expectantly for the usual Saturday afternoon of imagination and fantasy.
They hadn't been there for fifteen years. Me, I'd hung on much longer, showing up every Saturday afternoon to play until there was no one else left. Five, eight years, maybe more. Hundreds of Saturday afternoons, just like this one, each filled with magic.
I felt the itch. The itch to roll a twenty-sided die, move a badly but brightly painted lead figure across an erasable vinyl game board, to flip through endless pages of rules and notes, to live the life of a mighty hero. To be twelve years old again, and have everything be magical again.
Then I smelled the Winchell's again, and I realized that nothing had ever really changed. I wasn't twelve anymore, but everything is still magical. Somehow, in the eighteen years since, I've learned not to look in all the right places to see it. The cares of adulthood and the despair of wisdom make me shut my eyes to everything at times. But when I look in the right places, the places of memory, the places of reality, I can touch the magic again.
I got the tax forms I needed from the library. Somehow, it didn't seem shopworn, or dark, or old anymore. And when I got home, I found that all these tax forms weren't such a heavy burden after all.
All contents of Skaldheim (C) 2001 by Jefferson Krogh.URL: http://skaldheim.com/musings/candle/candle6.html
Revised: August 9, 2001.