An Offering of Ashes

     It wasn't today; March 9th holds no special meaning for me.  It was this weekend however, this weekend three years ago.  It works out perfectly because Ash Wednesday happened to fall on the week before the anniversary, just like it did that year.   March 2011.  The weekend after Ash Wednesday on March 2011.
     I was always a big fan of Ash Wednesday, when I was little it was all about who got the darkest ashes on their foreheads and who had the best sacrifice for Lent.  The thing I love most, though, was the song.  Not all the Ash Wednesday songs are great, in fact I think most of them are on the more dull side of things, but I was blessed enough to have the one song I love be played almost every year I was in school.  It's the song that goes
          We rise again from ashes, from the good we've failed to do.
          We rise again from ashes to create ourselves anew,
           If all our world is ashes, then must our lives be true
          From an offering of ashes, an offering to you
     Now, I'm not delusional, I know I could never sing any other place other than my shower, but that never stopped me from singing that song.  I would always sing it for weeks after Ash Wednesday because I absolutely adored it.  That's what I was singing when I checked my phone on Saturday morning three years ago, March 11, 2011.
     I see a couple of missed calls and a text message from my friend.  The message read "Camila I'm so sorry I really didn't want to tell you this over text but Mrs. Mansilla died last night." I stopped singing.  I stopped thinking.  I stopped breathing.  No part of me was working.  I walked into my kitchen and did the only thing I could do, call my other friend to let her know.  That's when I started crying; luckily I was alone in my house.  What else could I do now?  Everyone I knew was probably flooding the family with messages and condolences, but I was stuck at home with no way to get to them yet, so I sang.  Thankfully no one was around to hear me, singing and crying don't mix very well, but that is all I could do to keep from completely breaking down.  I had to be strong for my friend, for all of my friends.  So until I could do something else, something more, something helpful, I sang.

Faith, Trust, and a little bit of Pixie Dust

     There's this scene in Peter Pan where Wendy is about to leave Neverland and Peter is pleading with her to stay.  Upon realizing that his efforts are futile, he does what everyone does in a situation like this, he gets angry and starts yelling.  He screams at her something along the lines of "Fine, go, but once you grow up you can't come back!", and this, my friends, is the most profound thing he said throughout the entire movie.
     The deal with Neverland is that it is the ultimate place for children.  There are no parents to tell you what to do, so you basically get to run young and wild and free for the rest of eternity if you so wish.  But once you leave and grow up you can never go back.  You can never be a child again.  Once we grow up, there is no going back.  You cannot just make yourself believe in Santa Claus again or justify trying to fly by running really fast and jumping of a tall fixture.  You can be a kid and shirk your responsibilities as long as you want; you don't have to get a job, you don't have to keep going to school, and you don't have to listen to everybody else when they tell you magic isn't real, but when you do it's over.  There is no specific age that constitutes a grown up, there can be 25 year old children and there can be 12 year old adults, it depends completely on every individual's circumstances.  Because of this, sometimes I'm scared that I am already passed that threshold, that I have grown up and cannot go back to my own personal Neverland.  Sometimes.
     And then, other times, I moments like this one.  My excitement over this realization, my need to tell everyone so they can revel in how completely awesome that is, my euphoria for pinpointing the message of the entire movie into one single line, these are the moments that make me realize I have not passed the line of no return; I am no where near that line.  The fact that others I've told this to have not reacted in the same way I have, while it hurts that I obviously cannot convey its greatness, only solidifies my belief that I still am a child, and even though I am growing up, I have not yet grown up.  If this was the move The Polar Express I would be the character that can still hear the bells.  This is my own personal way of still believing in magic.  This is still my Neverland.