Firestar And Other Mythical Powers

As a little girl I wanted, desperately, to have a super power. I blame my hair color. Most red heads on TV were witches or magical, and I thought this should include me. I was also captivated by She-Ra, and didn't entirely understand why we didn't share more common ground.

I admit I was a bit quirky even as a little girl. The best way to entertain me was to put me in front of a mirror. Which my parents did with regularity. Any and everywhere. At a grocery store, department store, restaurant, the petting zoo -- if there was a mirror, I was in front of it. For hours I would world build, creating new friends, lives and stories through my own looking glass.

I was occasionally pragmatic, quite stubborn and terribly smitten with the fantastical. Magic ruled my world.

At some point I discovered my hocus-pocus word: firestar. I would raise my hands over my head and belt out the word, occasionally practicing my "magic-look" in front of the mirror -- between my imaginary performances for my invisible audience of thousands.

When my brother irritated me, which was every other second, I would scream the word at him like an obscenity. When I wasn't getting my way, I would call the word forth and then run from the room like a girlie chicken. When I wanted to make something amazing transpire, I would reach deep into the depths of my imagination, yank out all my emotion and round the vowels as I proclaimed: f.i.r.e.s.t.a.r.

Nothing usually happened. At least, I'm pretty sure nothing did. I tended to run from room to room yelling it, not pausing to see if there was an actual great occurrence following my proclamation, but I have it on good authority that nothing ever did. Still the word, the feeling, man it was powerful.

Words have power. They are magical. As a little girl I recognized this, as a (sorta) grown woman I continuously remind myself of this. We have such a gift in our vernacular, in the ability to pull meaning, weight and dynamism from the very inside of our beings.

Firestar.

Nothing may have happened right then, right in the middle of our house as the word passed through my lips. But I guarantee you that it was the first ripple, the first wave of transcendent imagination that propelled me into something magical, something mystical, something wonderful.

Today's word is: pulchritudinous



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