I have been obliterated by magic.

I mentioned with frequency this year that I declared this a Year of Healing. The truth of that statement is that I saw an owl– the first bird of the year– on January 1st. My Someone and I had just departed a year of break downs, of death, of goodbyes. Any omen, even a notoriously dark one, presented itself as an opportunity for things to be different. We spotted its wide white face, its massive body, it’s looming presence on a low branch on the rail trail that connects from our home. It took our damn breath away.

“It’s the Year of the Owl,” I said, as if that were something we regularly declared.

“It’s the Year of the Owl,” my Someone repeated back to me. And so, it was so.

“That means magic,” I said.

“Hmm,” my Someone responded. And then he agreed. “Okay. Magic.”

Magic quickly turned to healing. I’ve read enough Harry Potter and fantasy and sci-fi to understand it. When one discovers magic, they uncover themselves. In order to arrive at the magic, they must first face the trauma that initially forced the magic out of them– familial drama, an ex-lover, a hidden memory from a fall into a portal. Translated, they must heal. Or else they become Voldemort. It’s very direct.

In order to heal, one must become vulnerable. This is tricky business, as it leaves you open to new experiences, to overwhelming feelings, and to the possibility that you’ll learn something you wish you hadn’t. This is the art of noticing– noticing my breath becoming shallower. Noticing how often I feel like crying. Noticing the sound of owls more often than I knew owls were around. It’s not all bad. There is also the noticing of the sunlight on my dog’s head, of the first fall leaf, or the way a stranger reaches for their friend and touches them lightly on the cheek before carrying on like it wasn’t the most important moment in history. These are the spells. They are mesmerizing and everything becomes important. Which causes its own sort of madness– the strange isolation of wondering if you are the only one that can see the rapid fire beauty unraveling every second we are on this gently spinning Earth.

I tried to explain this to people throughout the year. Some nodded enthusiastically. Some smiled in the you-adorable-pet kind of way. Most instinctively recalled a time, often in their teens or twenties, when they did something bold– traveled overseas, quit their job, took a road trip, wandered the Appalachian Trail, fell in love. They get a glimmer in their eye that is something like nostalgia, but more like a vase on the top shelf that they can almost reach. And then they settle back into the present moment with a bit of dust on their shoulders. The magic is suddenly possible. Until they wipe it away and put on clean clothes. Until they forget.

The place we go when we brush with magic is not time travel. It is not youth. The place we remember is the present. It is the memory of time not touching time– future and past– but time touching now, of dipping our hand in the pool of warm concrete under feet, of a sonic wave hitting our ear of a taxi cab honking its horn, of the green smell of the birch bark as we peeled it back from the tree.

We come across this magic naturally in our youth. We’re all unwieldy zaps of light and masses of shifting planes into other worlds. What I don’t think we realize– what I didn’t realize– is that the magic doesn’t go away. It doesn’t become harder to detect. It is in fact possible that it becomes more accessible. But now we are growing up, we have the tools necessary to hone it. We can experience and tap into the magic without accidentally zapping our roommate in the butt with it. We have the emotional ability to hold it in our hands and wonder.

I anticipated my pursuit of Magic this year to land me somewhere different by now. I expected to not have to work for it after 10 months. I expected that I would wake up in a whirlwind of presence and certainty, of crows landing on my shoulders and flowers blooming at my feet as I walked. Instead, I am mostly a blubbering mess when I listen to Rich tell a room full of friends at his 80th birthday party last weekend that, “I am so glad to have gotten to know you all of these years.” Instead, I am squee-ing at the sight of a mouse in my kitchen, delighted to have a new friend, trying to lure it into a cup with peanut butter so I can rehome it. Instead, I am awash with grief and happiness, often in the same moment. Instead, I woke up last night in a panic. I am prone to these– a frequent outburst of anxiety in the early morning hours wherein nothing I was worried about before is abruptly the most pressing and potentially lethal possibility. I took stock of my surroundings. I am home. I am safe. It is still dark. I am scared. I am scared. I am scared.

In response, the Owl hooted outside my window. I listened. She called a few more times, and then it was quiet.

The magic is not that there was an Owl. The magic is that I was able to quiet my fear enough to hear her.

The magic is in the watching.

So maybe it’s working.