My kitchen canister set is different from the standard ones you see in the stores. To begin with it was made by a wonderful potter in the shades of blue that have always reminded me of the sea on a warm summer’s day. But the canisters had to be hand made because the labels I wanted I couldn’t find anywhere. Oh, it has “Flour” and “Sugar” like most standard American sets and a third jar labeled “Rice”, which although not common in the U.S. is a regular fixture in the Far East. But it is the fourth canister in my set which makes it unique, for that canister is labeled “Magic”. It never ceases to amaze me, the adults who open the jar, gaze inside, and announce…”It’s empty!” But there are others, more often than not young people, who run their fingers over the clay label and in whispered tones proclaim…”How awesome!” They believe, because someone, sometime, somewhere opened their hearts to the possibility. Like me, they would probably count that person among the most memorable of their lives.
My most memorable character was someone named Grady. I still don’t know if that was his first name or his last or if like some Madonna before her time, he only had one name.
I was only seven when I first met Grady. I had been put on a Greyhound bus and sent to spend the summer with my sister who was a junior at the University of Texas in Austin. Grady was a friend of my sister and her roommate Cathy. Where they met him I never learned, but he would come to town periodically with a guitar on his back and music and magic arrived with him.
Grady was tall and skinny–not just slender. He was a beatnik, which meant that he was a hippie before the hippies. I think he played his guitar in the coffee houses near campus at night, but during the daylight hours he was a kid’s delight. He played monopoly and checkers, took me fishing, and taught me endless Kingston Trio songs.
The next summer my sister and Cathy had finished their student teaching in Brownsville, Texas and had gotten an apartment in Corpus Christi for the summer. Once again, my mother packed me off to spend the summer with my sister. This time she and Cathy were living in an old apartment complex which was filled with college and post college students. I went to the beach almost daily and played hide and seek by moonlight with the college kids in the apartment quadrangle. Once again, Grady appeared.
Sometimes he would be there for a few days, and sometimes for a week or two. Since he worked nights, he was around during the day when most of the other occupants were away at their jobs. He told the kind of silly jokes that an eight year old loves, we had a secret handshake and password, and he taught me to jitter-bug.
Best of all, he would take me fishing when the tide came in–usually about 4 in the morning. We would drive out to the beach and then swim out to the third sand bar to fish. The water came up to his thighs, but I was chest deep in the warm dark waters of the early morning. The fishing was always good and we would laugh and tease each other. Sometimes I would catch a small hammerhead shark and he would say, “Watch out–his mother will be coming for you!” From then on every shadow in the water made my blood run cold. I would squeal and jump with each wave and Grady would laugh this incredible laugh.
One morning on the way out to the beach, I begged Grady to take me with him when he left. I told him that no one really wanted me and I complained that life wasn’t easy living with a bunch of college kids who just wanted to party and play all of the time. (I was, after all, eight going on forty.) As wonderful and carefree as my life might have seemed, I knew that basically I was in almost everyone’s way. In my short life I had been deposited on more doorsteps than I cared to count. My mother always sent me off, and my sister and her roommate although for the most part kind and caring, were only 21 themselves and didn’t always see things from a kid’s perspective. Also they had strange rules–like whenever Frank Sinatra was playing on the record player, I knew that I should take a blanket and sleep out by the pool. The last week before “payday” I sometimes existed on ketchup sandwiches and “doggie bags” brought home from dates. At least when I was with Grady there were usually fish to eat, and the music and the laughter made me feel like I wasn’t too much in the way. Grady gently tried to explain that he really couldn’t take care of a kid and plus the fact he would probably be arrested for kidnapping. I sat in stony silence listening to excuses that I knew were true. Grady conclude by saying, “It’s a great life, kid–you just have to live the magic.”
“There is no magic,“ I scoffed as crocodile tears rolled down my cheeks.
“See the street light up ahead?” Grady asked.
“Which one?”, I replied.
“The second one. Watch it,” Grady said.
“Big deal, it’s just a street lamp.”
“Keep watching.”
Grady held his index finger and his thumb together forming a circle. Then with a puff of his breath, he blew through the circle and his thumb and index finger parted. At that instant the streetlight blew out sending glass raining down on the hood and roof of our car.
“The magic is there, kid,” he grinned. “You just have to believe.”
“Do it again. Do it again!” I begged.
“That’s enough magic for one day,” he replied. “Anyway, we’ve got fishing to do.”
And with that he turned off of the highway onto the beach road.
Looking back, I have wondered if he somehow could tell that the light was about to blow out. Was there some flicker, some color change that alerted him to what was about to happen? Or was he truly magic?
I like to believe the latter.
Grady came and went the rest of the summer and with the end of that summer, I rode the bus back to Houston for the start of school.
I didn’t see Grady again for about a year and a half. My sister’s roommate, Cathy, was getting married and Grady came to the wedding. At the reception we laughed and teased and told jokes and then we cleared the floor, dancing the jitter-bug together. Afterward I sat on his knee and we talked and talked.
“What’s the password?” he whispered.
“Live the magic,” I replied.
Then once again crocodile tears welled up in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.
“What’s wrong, kid?” he said.
“I try,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes the magic is really hard to find.”
Grady hugged me, then lifted me off of his knee and stood me directly in front of him. For the second time, he held his thumb to his index finger and blew through the circle they formed.
“You’re the magic,” he whispered. “Now all you have to do is look inside.”
Then he reached out and tousled my hair.
I never saw Grady again after that day, but my life was forever changed. It no longer mattered where I was or whose doorstep I was deposited on. Nothing that happened in my world could hurt or destroy me–I was the magic. Now all that was left was to share it with others.
Scallop Songs 