Wish Fairy

Shout it from the rooftops– I am a Wish Fairy! What does that mean? It means I get to grant wishes to children for the Make-A-Wish foundation!! Could there be a better job for me? Anyone who knows me knows how much I love fairies, and those who know me well, know I actually am a fairy. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me start here. When I went to school in Paris in the summer of 1990, I spent a lot of time at an Irish pub called the James Joyce near Les Halles, and on the wall were quotes from great Irish poets. My favorite was a stanza from Yeats’ poem, Stolen Child and it said:

“Come Away, O Human Child, To the waters and the wilds, With a Faery, Hand-in-Hand, for the World’s more full of weeping, than you can understand.” (Yeats)

I return to this stanza again and again throughout my life, and it takes on new layers of meanings. It struck me at the pub when I was 19, and now that I’m 50 and have experienced the loss of my father, my marriage, and my best friend in the past two years, well let’s just say I have a different experience now of what a world full of weeping means.

But I have always been on the lookout for fairies, and this quest has taken me to some amazing people and places, the most amazing being Kim.

I met my twin soul, Kim, when we both played fairies in 1992 at the Globe Playhuse in West Hollywood. This was back in the days when the courts let you do community service instead of paying for tickets, and since I never had money to pay for my speeding and parking tickets, I always signed up for community service. This particular speeding ticket led me to answering phones at The Globe Playhouse. The theater owner, Thad Taylor, was a merchant marine with a long ponytail and Shakespeare fanatic and he had built an exact half size replica of Shakespeare’s original Globe in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I would roller skate over to the theater for my shift and answer the phone or sweep the floors or take tickets—whatever was needed. The play at the time was Midsummer Night’s Dream, my favorite Shakespeare play (because of the fairies), and it was in its second run because the first run had sold out.

One day, Peasblossom hurt her back. She was a successful Hollywood stuntwoman and gymnast and for her role as Peasblossom, she performed a lot of amazing tricks including coming out of a trap door in the very high ceiling of the theater, upside down on a rope. Thad and I had become buddies at this point, so he suggested I audition to replace her. Peasblossom doesn’t talk in the play, she just runs around with the fairies making fairy sounds, and since these fairies were circus acrobats, contortionists, and stunt people, they did some really cool acrobatic tricks.

The director, the hot and handsome Alex Daniels, said, “Can you do any gymnastics?” “Absolutely!” I piped. (I didn’t take acrobatics in Dessa Hepler’s backyard every summer for nothing, Mr. Daniels!) I showed him my back walkovers, front walkovers, cartwheels, backbends, splits, and everything else I could think of, which wasn’t much.

He nodded, “Great. You got the job.”

I cheered.

“One more thing, he said, “Can you come out of the ceiling upside down on a rope through that trap door?”

I looked up the thirty feet to the ceiling and smiled, “Of course!”

Sigh. (From my inner more logical self)

Ah Marci, Marci, Marci, Marci. Really? You have never climbed a rope, slid down a rope, or come out of a ceiling. You have no experience with aerial work or working up high.

But honestly, I argued with myself, how hard could it be? If I hang on tight, what could go wrong?

Well…. I still have the scars on my ankle from the rope burns to prove what could go wrong, nevermind that breaking my neck or smashing my face were distinct risks. But… ah youth… I was 23 and invincible.

I put on my shiny green unitard and fairy face paint and ratted my hair into fairy hair. I climbed the four ladders to the rafters and crawled along a beam to the trap door. Someone showed me how to wrap my foot and arm in the rope so I wouldn’t fall, but no one mentioned anything about rope burns.

My heart was pounding like a congo drum when I slid out of the ceiling on high speed, heading straight towards the very hard stage. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, so the rope was swinging wildly around the stage, leaving Puck, Helena, Titania, and Mustardseed to jump and duck out of my way.

I managed to stop myself right before I hit the ground and plopped off the rope with as much grace as I could muster, trying to hide my burning red hands and bleeding ankle.

My face was red, I was in pain, but I smiled bravely as the cast and director stared at me with raised eyebrows.

I coughed. “I just need to practice a couple of times.”

Someone took pity on me and suggested I wrap my hands with ace bandages and get an ankle tube to protect my skin for the slide. And every night, five nights a week for six weeks, with movie stars in the audience like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Connie Selleca, and Jeff Conaway, I slid out of that damn ceiling with great fairy bravado, silently praying I didn’t break anything.

I was scared as hell, but I did it anyway.

That’s the fairy way.

(Actually I have no idea if that is the fairy way—I don’t know what fairies do besides dancing around mushrooms and sprinkling glitter around and feasting and making mischief.)

So after a few weeks in Midsummer, another fairy (Tia! If that’s not a true fairy name I don’t know what is!) had to leave to shoot a movie, and Kim replaced her.

Now Kim actually COULD DO all the tricks and more. She flipped, did handsprings and contortions with ease, and flew across the stage no problem. She sang the Fairy Queen Lullaby in a strong clear voice up in the loft onstage with me laying on the ground beside her with Moth on my hand—Moth was a puppet fairy who only came out during the lullaby scene and I was the lucky actor who got to slink along behind the rail straining my arm and twisting my back with the sock on my hand.

What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? (Midsummer)

Kim was magic and Kim was my twin soul. Once we spent time together, we were inseparable. She moved down the street from me and we did everything together. Even the worst, most mundane errands (Bank! Gas station! DMV!) turned magical in our Fairy Bubble, and we laughed our way through our days, arm in arm, hip to hip.

“Therefore go with me, And I will give thee fairies to tend on thee, and they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, and sing while thou on press’d flowers doth sleep.” (Midsummer)

We started collecting fairy wings to honor the way we met and our dedication to all things light and sparkly, and when we finally moved in together, we called our place The Royal Palace, because everything felt royal when we were together.

“Pluck the wings of painted butterflies, To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.” (Midsummer)

The Palace was covered in jasmine and honeysuckle and had an orange tree and beautiful roses.

(Also, I’m focusing on the good things because a person not wearing rose colored glasses might have seen a crummy duplex in a questionable neighborhood with a washer and dryer off the back of the house in a thin wooden shack. My sister said, “Aren’t you afraid that an ax murderer is going to be waiting out there for you? I hadn’t thought of that, but thanks a lot! I am now!)

We painted every room of the Palace a different color with a different theme, and we had endless parties in our little house and it’s tiny backyard. And because all our friends were performers, parties turned into epic talent shows, a tradition from my Mormon childhood where family nights and talent shows are a regular part of the landscape.

“Hand-in-hand, with fairy grace, will we sing, and bless this place.” (Midsummer)

Kim made me fairy wings for nearly every celebration, birthdays, Christmas, and in later years, for my baby showers and wedding. And I bet if she was still here, she would be making me a pair for my divorce. But back in the Royal Palace era, I hung all the fairy wings she gave me on my bedroom walls. One day there was a fire in the Palace and all the wings burnt up. We looked at each other and the burnt wings, then we shrugged and laughed while we made more.

Later in the 90’s, we went to Scotland and Ireland together and delighted in the tales we heard from the local people about the “wee ones” in their gardens.

Fairy lore was everywhere here, and we kept a lookout in case we were lucky enough to see any “wee ones” for real. Before the internet or cell phones, we explored Edinburgh the old fashioned way, by walking around and stumbling into places that looked interesting. We ended up in a little shop that sold tartans and when I told the shopkeeper my grandmother’s last name, McClure, we were directed to my ancestral castle, http://www.dunvegancastle.com, on a little island off Edinburgh called Skye.

We took a ferry over to Skye, and stayed at an old inn. We saw a bridge called “Fairy Bridge” and when we asked about it, our little wizened innkeeper told us in her thick brogue, “That’s where the fairies dance at night.”

We looked at each other in excitement and planned to stake out the bridge that night, but alas, it was pouring sheets of rain and there was no way to see two inches in front of your eyes. The next day we visited Dunvegan which is up a winding road covered in forest and ferns and red polka-dotted mushroom rings. The castle sits up on a hill overlooking a massive lake, or ‘loch’ as the Scots say.

Kim and I walked the majestic stone hallways together, filled with armour and massive oil paintings of clan ancestors. I was sure that I would see a large portrait of either a fairy or a belly dancer ancestor, but no luck. They were all dressed in normal Scottish Medieval clothing. I looked in a glass cabinet with a chalice from the 1400’s and thought about what kind of magical things that chalice might have seen, if it had eyes. Dunvegan has stood for centuries, and is known for its warriors and its bagpipers. It is said that people from the clan are blessed by a fairy queen to be extraordinary bagpipers, and every year to this day, clan bagpipers all come to Dunvegan once a year for a bagpiping festival. I’ve never tried the bagpipes, but I bet I’d be good at them.

We walked around crumbling stone steps outside the castle and looked at the lake, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Lochness Monster, but Kim kept making a face like a Lochness Monster might have, which involved flaring her nostrils and puffing up the area between her nose and lips, and with her huge brown eyes, she was a ringer for “Nessie”,which kept me laughing so hard that even twenty years later, all she had to was say “Nessie” and flare her nostrils to send me into giggles.

Finally, we were in a hall of the castle called the Fairy Tower. I was looking at a huge framed piece of tattered fabric and reading the description when a little old lady floated up to me. She said, “You like the Feddy Flag?” (“Feddy” is how Scots pronounce Fairy, and I’ll spare you our Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First” conversations regarding taking the “feddy” to find the “feddies”.)

She proceeded to tell me a story about how, centuries ago, one of the chiefs of the clan fell in love and married a fairy, and they had a fairy baby. The fairy ancestor had sewn the Fairy Flag with silk from the Middle East in the 4^th century, and she had given the flag magical powers that protected the clan through every battle since then. Clansmen had carried the flag into every battle in ancient times, which explained its tattered appearance. She told us that even up to World War 2, clanmembers carried a photo of the Fairy Flag in their wallets as protection.

Kim and I looked at each other, our eyes huge. “I knew it!” she said, pumping her fist in the air, “You have fairy blood. It makes so much sense!”

We looked closely at the dirty ivory silk framed on the wall. It had been mended over and over with thick red thread. It didn’t look magical at all—in fact it looked more like a big handkerchief a hobo might have used to blow his nose and tossed behind him, but now that I knew the story, I felt chills when I looked at it.

Kim and I left the castle and walked through the forest surrounding the castle. We tried dancing in the polka-dotted mushroom rings, hoping to get to visit fairyland, and it probably worked because together, our lives were absolutely a fairyland.

Together, our world was magical, filled with dancing, music, glitter, fairy wings, food, wine, and bendable time.

As we drove around Skye, we saw thirteen rainbows, and with every rainbow, we changed the course of our tiny rental car, trying to find the end. We were sure that if anyone on the planet could find pots of gold, it would be us.

And you know what? We actually found it!

It turns out the most valuable thing in our lives together, the pot of gold for us, was time spent together. Our adventure chasing rainbows and making fairy wings and laughing our asses off and all those years together, was more precious than all the gold in the universe.

Recently a shaman told me I was surrounded by pots of gold, and I just realized as I wrote this, maybe the shaman meant I was surrounded by Kim’s love. I was hoping she meant actual pots of gold as I look for my next economic venture, but maybe the pots of gold are time spent with the people I love most. The time spent sprinkling fairy dust and granting fairy wishes to children; the time spent taking in the magic—that’s the true gold.

With no cell phones, when we returned to civilization, I called my Dad back in Utah and said, “Dad! Guess what? Our great great great great grandmother was a fairy!” He answered, “At least it wasn’t a great great grandfather.”No one in my family believed me. They just shook their heads at me and laughed and ignored my incredible finding. Even when I showed them pictures of the Fairy Flag, they just snorted. So years later, when the internet came about, I googled Dunvegan and was thrilled to see the Fairy Flag and it’s amazing story online for the world to see. I sent the link to my entire family with a note, “SEE!! I TOLD YOU!! WE HAVE FAIRY ANCESTRY!!”

Guess what they did? Shrugged and carried on with life as if we aren’t the most magical sparkly fairy family ever. Absurd! But that’s okay, I’ll carry the torch for our family’s fairy stories. And I am thrilled when my nieces and nephews take an interest and call me and ask me about our fairy ancestor.

And I carry on the Fairy tradition now with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

A few days ago, Make-A-Wish sent me on my first assignment to visit a little girl who was having a heart transplant. On visits, it is recommended we bring an “icebreaker” which is a gift for the child after speaking to their parents about what they love. The little girl’s mom said, “Unicorns and slime.” JACKPOT! I TEACH a Rainbow Unicorn class where we make slime every class!! So I bought her a unicorn with a brushable mane and tail and a container of slime. She was overjoyed, clutching the unicorn to her heart with a huge smile and immediately sticking her fingers into the slime. So we sat down at her kitchen table to discuss her wishes. Best Conversation! If you want to light up your day, talk to a 5-year-old about their dreams!

(And every time I talk about wishes, I think about a woman I met named Wish—really! That was her name! We had just moved to New Orleans and had to evacuate for Hurricane Ivan. Annabelle was 5 months old, and we sat in seven hours of traffic to get out of the city, me driving with one arm stretched behind me the entire journey to entertain and reassure my baby as she had to face the other direction in her car seat. We were taken on this journey with John, a Loyola music professor I had met once, who knew a place for us to stay—which ended up being a huge plantation-style mansion/recording studio on the Vermilion Bayou with a woman named Wish. How’s that for magical?)

So I said to the little girl, “If you could have one wish in the world, what would it be?” I was thinking, okay if I’m totally honest, I was HOPING she would say something like, “I want to ride a unicorn on a rainbow bouncing over lake of glitter slime.” I couldn’t wait to figure out a way to make this happen.She said she loved swimming, and beaches, Moana and Minnie Mouse… and Little Nas X. What? The guy who sings Old Town Road? She lit up when she talked about Little Nas X, so we put him at the top of her list, and her second wish turned into a Disney cruise which covered all her other loves: Moana, Minnie Mouse, beaches, and swimming. In researching wish granting and Disney, I discovered a place called “Give Kids the World” www.gktw.org that gives weeklong free vacations to critically ill children and their families. There are so many heroes in our world, people. I’m just amazed at the kindness and generosity everywhere I look. Founded by Henri Landwirth, a Holocaust survivor, GKTW was created because of a little girl with Leukemia who wished to visit Orlando. Mr. Landwirth offered up a hotel room to her, but the rest of her trip took too long to arrange and time ran out so she never got to go. Mr. Landwirth vowed this would never happen again and created GKTW, an 84-acre resort designed to delight and enchant children with it’s whimsical buildings that some might say resemble a sort of fairy land. I have to say that I’m in love with their job description, which reads, “Do you believe in magic, giant bunnies, fairies in enchanted castles, and the power of hope? Do you want to inspire people, young and old, to believe in magic too?”

I SAY YES!!

Which is why I’m a Wish Fairy. And in my work with terminally ill children, for the past twenty five years, I have carried with me a velvet bag full of “Fairy wishes”, glitter, and a fairy wand given to me by Kim. It’s a toy wand with a fairy on the end that lights up and makes a tinkle when you push a button. I use it when I work with children, and it’s their favorite part. We sit on the floor and go around the circle, and each child reaches their hand into the bag without looking. They pull out a fairy wish which says something like, “You are butterfly dancing in a meadow” or “You are a tiger prowling in the jungle” or “You are a pebble tumbling in a stream” and the child acts out the message, then closes their eyes and makes their own wish, and with a little glitter and a tinkle from the fairy wand, they usually open their eyes at the last second and watch in awe as she lights up.

Unbelievably, in twenty five years of use, the wand has never run out of batteries, so maybe it actually IS magic. The fairy wish cards I bought at some new age shop in Santa Monica in 1993. They are bent with use, “Well-loved” I call them. The little fairy on the end of the wand still lights up, and I like to pretend each child gets a little dash of Kim Fairy Dust, and that some time in their lives they get to experience having a twin soul like Kim, someone who always believes in them, who goes on adventures with them, who will chase rainbows and believe in magic and make them laugh until they can’t breathe, who drops everything and flies in when the chips are down, who thinks the sun rises and sets with them, and sees their magic, even when they don’t.

She was my wish come true.

And just for the record, if I could have a wish granted right now, this moment, I would wish Kim back here with me.

Wherever you are, Kim, I am carrying on our Fairy Torch.

I don’t want to do it without you, but I here I am.

“Goodnight sweet friend: thy love ne’er alter, till thy sweet life end.” (Midsummer)

Eternal, Unchanging, Forever… Marci loves Kim.

(And if you’re interested in working with critically ill children making magic for their families, there are many organizations doing it all over the world. AND you can help the same demographic in your grocery shopping by buying Newman’s Own organic brand of food which goes to support his two camps for terminally ill children. Not only was Old Blue Eyes drop dead gorgeous and an amazing actor, he also started the https://www.holeinthewallgang.org (in CT) and ps://www.barretstown.org/us/(in Ireland), both of which provide seriously ill children with the chance to go to summer camp. There is magic there waiting for you!)

“And if we shadows have offended, Think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumber’d here, While these visions did appear.” (Midsummer)