Magic, in your hands

Open the rear passenger side door. Wait for her to climb, carefully and accurately, up onto the sideboard of the car, and then onto the lip of the seat; watch her pivot, and settle into the car seat. Gently wrap the safety straps around her obliging, dutifully raised arms. Click the latch. Walk around the car, slide into your own driver's seat, turn the ignition on, begin to move, and listen for the little voice, from the back: 'May I please have my Mozart music?"

It's a sweet request, and usually sweetly worded - and it refers to Cleo's current favorite CD, a creative retelling of The Magic Flute, in which a young girl whose mother plays the role of the Queen of the Night in a local opera company mistakenly wanders into the enchanted setting of Mozart's libretto. Carrying nothing but a flute, she's initially terrified when she encounters a knight errant fighting a dragon. But she quickly learns that in fact her flute bears special powers, which allow her to navigate a richly strange new realm.

Occasionally, the CD involves snippets of the original opera, although the sung words are altered slightly, and sung in contemporary English. Still, it's neat to see Cleo's enthusiasm regarding a relatively ancient work of music, and I'm occasionally shocked at the depth of her understanding regarding the motives of secondary characters (is Papageno courageous, or not? All you have to do is ask the back seat, and you'll learn the answer). Above all, though, I'm touched by the way in which the CD casts magic as the natural province of children. The world of magic, in this production, is democratic; it's always at hand.

And, occasionally, that sense then spills out of the car, into the world at large. A few days ago, on a lambent Wednesday afternoon, I took Cleo to a local creek, so that we could pretend to be the dwarves, looking for Snow White as they return from a day of mining. Along the way, though, she told me that she happened to have a number of treasures in her two small dress pockets. And sure enough: when I asked to see, she soon pulled out the trove that you see above, laid out on a rock in the middle of the coursing water. Plastic bear, cardboard mirror: the world of magic is never, it seems, as remote as we might first imagine.