cair paravel...

doing my nightly blogchecking and i see that sandy's got a post about seeing the trailer for the new "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" movie. and it got me thinking...

when i was very young, my parents gave me the full set of the chronicles of narnia books. i read them cover to cover, one after the other, as soon as i had received them. i remember reading TLTW&TW for the first time. i was one of those nerdy kids who would hide out under the blankets with a flashlight to keep reading after the parents had called "lights out". it was one of those nights when i got to the part where aslan is killed. i was heartbroken, devastated. i recall leaving my bedroom to find my parents, who were in the living room folding laundry, because i was in tears and was so upset that the white witch could be so horrid as to murder aslan. that was the first time a book ever made me cry. it wasn't the last time that one of the narnia books made me cry.

i was completely enchanted by the stories of the pevensie children, who somehow managed to find the secret entranceways at just the right time so that they could visit narnia. lucy, who was the youngest of the four pevensies, was my favorite. in TLTW&TW, she was given a magic cordial that was made of diamonds and had healing powers. when i was little, i filled an empty glass spice bottle with water and incandescent beads from a mardi gras necklace and pretended that i was lucy and that was my cordial. and i would wander through my neighborhood trying to find a way in to narnia. and if you laugh at me for that, then clearly you have no soul.

and into adulthood, i've continuously done things in search of the portal to narnia. i'll walk through spaces that remotely resemble magic doorways. i'll take alternate paths. i'll look at things that might just possibly be other than they appear. i know full well that this means i'm a little bit delusional and it's symptomatic of my ever-silly optimism, but the anticipation makes my world a better place.

and you really never know, do you?