Dear —
Remember the brook behind our house? And remember as kids, the stories T. would tell us about Willy Wonka’s steamship that came to float down that brook only every once in a while? It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood knew when that ship came except us. They’d come home with brown paper bags full of candy and would share, but not without boasting first and telling us we’d missed the boat. You and I always mysteriously just missed it by minutes it seemed, and the disappointment of missing out on all that candy ran deep.
I really wanted to meet Mr. Wonka. I imagined him smiling while handing out those enviable brown paper bags. Why couldn’t anyone just tell him to wait for us? Just think about what was going on in our little minds! But you and I eventually figured it out. Those piles of sticky sweet candy came from nowhere else but the corner store.
I was told there is a train that runs through this park, but I didn’t see it anywhere. I thought I heard the clanging of bells signaling a train’s arrival, but maybe I was trying to listen for something that just wasn’t there. I touched the tracks. Cold and still, not even vibrating as if in use. But I wanted so badly in the moment to see that train. Our story about Wonka’s steamship pops up in my mind every now and then in those “just missed it” moments, and this was one of them.
Do you know that’s one of my favorite memories I carry from our childhood? All of T.’s stories and our gullible selves. But I see it now in a way that I didn’t before. Can we ever really know how much wonder sparks between what is real and what isn’t?
