Half-Magic

Half-Magic by Edward Eager. I read it over 40 years ago, yet not a day goes by that I don’t scan the ground or beach looking for a coin that might allow me to make wishes, and see the magic of books come alive here on earth. One day, I found a 5 Franc coin on a beach in Brittany. I felt like I had found a gold doubloon. My boyfriend, a logical German, just shook his head at me as I explained my life-long wish to find a wishing coin. In San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico, while walking to the supermarket, I found 11 cents, American: a dime and a penny. I taped them into my journal, and now those 11 cents are in my jewelry box. I’ve found a quarter in a snowbank and probably at least a few dollars worth of pennies in New York City. The other day in Loveland, Colorado I found a nickel, corroded with salt.

That book has kept alive the idea that there is more to this world than a simple life of working, and eating, and loving, and cleaning. The continuous search for the magic coin has given me joy when I was seriously ill, when I was going through divorce, and on normal sunny days when nothing much was happening. Somewhere always in my mind and always in my heart is this knowledge that magic is out there and that magic will find me.

As I write this, I realize that the magic is already in me, simply a perspective on the world, that sees coincidence as a vaguely remembered wish. Without Edward Eager’s Half Magic, I would have lived the same life as I have lived: it did not direct me towards a career or an education. Instead, it made my life magical, because magic was always around the corner, lying head-side up on a sidewalk or a beach.