“Make fun of it if you want. Insult it as cheap and cloying. But I’m telling you, Mogen David is not just wine. It’s magic. I had my first taste of it when I was eleven.
‘Do you think she ought to?’ my mother asked my uncle as he offered it to me.
‘It’s only a thimble full. It won’t hurt her to taste it.’
She looked at Daddy, who shrugged.
I’d been reading the second book in the Chronicles of Narnia, and that night I fell asleep still holding it in my hand. When I woke up, I wasn’t in bed. I was in the middle of a group of children and a lion standing over me and arguing.
‘This never happened before!’
‘She wasn’t in the original story. She has to go!’
‘Where do you propose we send her?’
‘You’re the king! You figure it out!’
‘But this is your story, Caspian.’
‘Please,’ I said, scooting a safe distance from the lion, ‘can’t I just join you? Don’t people always appear in stories because you need them, even if you don’t realize it yet?’
Say what you please–that I was a drunk little girl–but eleven years later, I can tell you that without fail, a spoonful of Mogen David before bed has taken me all over the world and through the galaxy. Books are not what you think they are–typescript on static pages. Combine a book and this magic elixir and you have a key that unlocks the portal to a secret universe.”
I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.