Constance's Magic ~ Exploration #32 World of Magic

On the weekend we floated that page we also put some work in to our Explorer Book as well. I was thinking about a number of different explorations as I walked along the beach when I found a plastic spoon.

It was a regular everyday standard plastic spoon. What struck me about this spoon on the beach was that it appeared to be the ONLY garbage on the beach. Which is, sadly, a rather unique phenomena given this day and age.

I pick up the spoon and started to make my way back to where my family was digging in the sand. I was keeping my eye open for sea glass, something I always do at any beach I go to, and now for garbage.

There was no garbage to be seen. This stood out for me and made me want to keep the spoon.

Just a spoon in a coffee cup
with sea glass and shells

Back at our shady spot I dropped the sea glass I found in my empty coffee cup along with my mysterious spoon.

We found a lot of sea glass that day too. Which is always exciting for me.

I love sea glass. But I'll write about it another day.

Today is the story of the spoon.

Notes on the spoon and my thoughts about it

At home I pulled out the Explorer Book and sat down to record everything about this spoon.

What I struggled with was deciding what Exploration to attach the spoon to. 

There were many option. #5 The First thing you See. #10 One Thing. #34 Interesting Garbage (see below for explanations of these.)

Then I saw Exploration "#32. World of Magic"

I liked this one. There was something perhaps magical about this spoon. I am really not sure what. It is after all just a spoon. Yet, when I read this one I knew I had to write a story of how this spoon was really a magical spoon.

So here goes: Constance's Magic

 Once upon a time, in the summer when it was very hot, there lived a sad little girl.

This little girl was sad because all she ever wanted, in her whole life, was to have a garden. This was her wish. Especially in the summer she wished for a garden with flowers and trees; bushes that grew fruit and a plot to grow vegetables. At night she dreamt of green shadowy places where birds could hide, build nests and sing.

She would grow red and purple flowers for the butterflies and hummingbirds; white and blue flowers for the fairies. In the spring crocus and narcissus would bloom and later marigolds and calendulas would be grown to keep away the pests and because she liked orange.

In the vegetable plot there would be peas and beans on tall poles, like flags across the garden, waving Hello in the breeze. “Come see what we’ve done!” they would shout. “Look peas! Look beans! Look at all the good green things to eat!”

They would shelter lettuce and cabbage, pumpkins and squash. Sage, rosemary, mint, thyme and balm, plants that smelled so good when crushed between fingers would ring the garden beds. 

In the fall as the pumpkins ripened to their jolly jack-o-lantern shapes there would be sunflowers and late blooming roses in blush pink and butter yellow.

When winter came she would protect the beds with straw and mulch, turn over the soil to its rest and sleep away the frost and ice.

But the little girl did not have a garden. She lived in a beige apartment, in a gray city, with a balcony too small for garden. All there was room for on the balcony was her father’s hibachi and her mother’s lounge chair. Not even a tomato in a basket would fit there.

Once, her mother bought her a potted plant for her window sill. The plant was a deep rich green and had light green freckles on its heart shaped leaves.

But either the sunlight on the window sill was too harsh, or the wind too cold, because the plant with its heart shaped freckled leaves died.

The little girl couldn’t bear the thought of throwing out something that had once been alive so she left it on her window sill; a dried out reminder of a dream waiting to come true.

~~~

The summer that this little girl was very sad was also very hot. So hot the apartment felt like an oven and the little girl a roast chicken inside it. She begged her mother to take her to the park, the pool, the beach, anywhere that she could cool down and perhaps spend time in someone else’s garden pretending it was hers.

On days her mother did not have to work she would take the little girl to these places because she too felt like a roast chicken trapped under the broiler.

Both of them loved best of all, the beach. The breeze off the water cooled them. The sand between their toes tickled and sparkled in the sun. The water was brisk, refreshing and completely inviting.

One day while at the beach, during the summer that was very hot, the little girl found something. A plastic spoon; an ordinary piece of trash, lost from a picnic on the sand; or perhaps it fell off a boat as it sailed along the shore, then washed up on the rocks as the tide went out.

It was made of clear plastic, but the salt and scruffiness of the ocean floor made it foggy. To the little girl is looked like it was made of mist and cool sea spray.

To the little girl is seemed not an ordinary spoon at all but something curious, something mysterious and containing a secret for her alone to discover. Or so it pleased her to imagine as played along the surf.

Later, she sat on her towel in the shade of a beach umbrella playing with the spoon. Her mother handed her a slice of dripping watermelon to eat. She held it one hand while she dug in the sand with the spoon in the other. As she bit into the juicy watermelon the little girl imagined she was planting watermelon seeds with the spoon.

~~

That evening, after the little girl was sent to bed, she got up and looked out her bedroom window. Sometimes if she tried really hard she could see past the other apartment buildings to the park a few blocks away; where there were maple trees and roses.

She was turning the spoon over and over in her hands imaging the park, and then she stuck it in the dry dirt of her dead potted plant.

“I’m sorry that you died.” She whispered as she dug in the dirt. It was firm and parched; she had to push the spoon so hard she thought it might break. Once she loosened some of the dirt it crumbled to powder and dust that made her want to sneeze.

Leaving the spoon stuck in the dead potted plant she went to bed. Her mom had promised to take her to the park the next day.

~~

The little girl was so excited the next morning when she woke up that she completely forgot about the spoon; so she did not see the magical thing that had happened over night to her little dead plant.

The soil was no long stiff and parched. It was damp with moisture and it gave off the faint scent of green grass, freshly cut. And right in the center of the pot, next to the lip of the plastic spoon, was a tiny green shoot.

~~

The little girl had a wonderful day at the park. The maple trees cast long deep shadows on the grass; their leaves whispered in the wind. Squirrels climbed on their branches picking the seeds; which the little girl knew were called keys. The little girl like to imagine the maple keys that twirled around in the air like spinning tops were actual keys that opened magical doors; each one leading to a magical realm and of course gardens. Gardens where all the flowers were blue or everything smelled like bubblegum or maybe every flower was black with silver and tin leaves.

The little girl was disappointed she had forgotten the spoon. She would have liked to have dug a hole with it, perhaps opening up a tunnel to an underground home of a cheery gnome or hedgehog.

She was very tired when she returned from the park and went into her room to lie down. When she entered her room she gasped, the little dead plant was not dead at all. It was alive and growing. Six leaves, heart shaped and freckled, were reaching out from the pot and a long tendril with a curly end dangled over the edge of the sill.

“Mom, come quick!” she shouted.

“What is it Constance? Are you okay?” Her mother exclaimed as she rushed into the room.

“Look mom!” said Constance, “My plant. It’s growing again!”

“How strange,” replied her mother. “Have you been watering it? I thought it died.”

The little girl shook her head too shocked to speak. She noticed something that her mother did not. “Well, you’d better take better care of it this time.” Her mother said, as she left to start some laundry.

“Okay.” The little girl said. Quietly she closed her bedroom door. And slowly she walked over to the plant, eyeing it carefully. She was a bit afraid to touch it, yet she was also curious. How could this have happened? She wondered. She hadn’t done anything to it except dig in the dirt with the spoon she had found. The spoon. The ordinary piece of trash plastic spoon, washed up on a beach, was sticking out of the pot.

Gingerly she reached out towards it, not sure what to expect when she touched it. Warily she poked it with her finger then drew back quickly. Nothing. It was just a spoon. Again she reached out for it and pulled it from the pot. Rich damp soil fell from the spoon as she held it up to the light.

“It’s just a spoon.” She said to the setting sun in the window. Twirling it in her fingers, thinking it looked like cool mist she also remembered the twirling maple keys. Perhaps it wasn’t an ordinary spoon after all.

~~

The following morning the potted plant had 13 heart shaped freckled leaves and 3 tendrils with curly ends reached out towards the floor.

It was very early with Constance woke up. She dressed quietly and picking up the spoon just as quietly snuck out of the apartment.

In the night an idea had come to her, one she wanted to test.

There were few cars and no people out of the street this early in the morning. Not even morning dog walkers which pleased the little girl. She didn’t want anyone looking at her strangely or questioning what she was doing out so early in the morning by herself and with a plastic spoon.

Out on the sidewalk Constance looked around and quickly found the perfect spot for her test. A long deep crack snaked across the gray sidewalk. It was full of dust and grime from the street. Very carefully she crouched down and dragged the lip of the spoon along the whole length of the fracture.

Satisfied, she stood and looked around for more places to put the spoon to the test. Along the edge of the apartment building, where the sidewalk met the dingy bricks was a brittle looking dandelion. It lay limp and brown from the crack ready to crumble to filth. She gently popped the edge of the spoon into the crack next to the dandelion and wiggled it a bit.

The task complete she grinned to herself and headed off down the block the spoon gripped tightly in her hand.

Next to her apartment building was a bakery. It had closed down a couple months earlier and stood empty. Outside the front doors were two large wooden barrels that the bakery had had flowers in. They were dead and the dirt was dry. Confidently the little girl dug around the brittle plants with the spoon. She sung a little tune under her breath as she worked.

Further down the block there was a scraggly old tree. Once there were many trees growing along the street, but most of them had died and the city hadn’t replaced them. Constance dug in the dirt surrounding the tree which was mostly dead and had no leaves, except for a few tired yellow ones on a single branch.

She found chewing gum and cigarette butts in the dirt, which she carefully lifted out with the spoon and threw into the nearby bin.

Suddenly she remembered the time.  She’d been out in the street for quite a while and her mother would be scared if she got up and discovered she was gone; so she headed home. On the way she was please to notice that the dirt in the crack where she had done her first test had turned a faint green. A closer look showed tiny seedlings growing. Constance giggled, it was working! And she went into breakfast.

~~

“What’s gotten into you?” her mother asked. Constance couldn’t sit still. She kept jumping up from the table and leaning out the kitchen window. Not that she could see the sidewalk below, she just couldn’t help herself.

“Nothing.” She replied. “What are we doing today?”

“Did I hear you open the apartment door this morning?”

“Mom, I asked you a question first?” 

“Okay, okay. We can go back to the beach if you want. I think it’s going to be hot again today.”

“YAH!” Constance shouted so loud her mother took a step back in shock.

It was hard for Constance to be patient as she waited for her mother to get ready for the beach. She paced about the apartment, trying not to whine for her mother to hurry up. Instead she checked on her potted plant now with 15 leaves and another tendril just beginning to uncurl at its base.

Finally they were ready to go.

The little girl laughed out loud as the stepped from the apartment building. The long snaking fissure in the sidewalk was bursting with glossy jade leaves. It looked like a river of green water meandering across a gray desert.

The dandelion in the crack next to the building had fresh and bright, long toothy leaves jutting out in all directions like a green star burst and right in the center was a yellow flower the size of the little girl’s hand.

Her mother was speechless and she took in all the green that now filled the street; so different from the bleak gray and tan of yesterday. Constance grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her down the street. At the bakery the wooden barrels were over flowing with pink and white geraniums, smiling pansies with orange and yellow and black faces spilled over purple petunias and happy yellow and white daisies.

On the corner the scraggly old tree had bright red leaf buds on all its branches. Soft ferns were slowly unfurling at its base. As the little girl watched one of the buds opened into a small green leaf.

By the end of the day, Constance knew, the tree would be covered in leaves.

The little girl’s mother shook her head with disbelief and Constance said nothing, instead she clutched the spoon in her hand and smiled. This ordinary look plastic spoon wasn’t ordinary at all. It had a secret, a secret shared only with the little girl who had dreamt of a garden. The little girl knew that wherever she went for now on she could have a garden and she was sad no longer.

~~

When they got to the beach they saw a huge crowd gathered. Constance pushed her way through the crowd and she saw growing from the spot she had first dug with her spoon the largest watermelon plants she had ever seen.

The End. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Since beginning this story I've found other objects for World of Magic - items that have stories attached to them and I am working. There are 3 more in the works:

 "Bladderwrack"

"Raven Cone"

"Donkey Thief"
















Stay tuned, or better yet follow this blog and you'll be updated when I post them.


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Other Explorer options, as mentioned at the start: