When I was a youngling I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and loved it so much that I created as best I could paperdoll Characters and a backdrop for them.
When I had daughters of my own I made sure they came to know that story.
I had no idea how much they had taken it in until I met Steve and brought him home to meet my two young daughters. Not wanting to spring a total stranger on them I described to them his love of nature and especially animals. Since we were then in Family Housing at UND where I was working on finishing my degree, I didn't have to tell them that he values education and books, too.
Anyway, the time had come to introduce them and I watched the faces of my girls as he walked into the room.
Round went eyes of deep brown and eyes of blue-green. In sucked sharp breaths. To me flew glances bright with questions.
Soon they were at my side, pulling me to them. Bending, I listened to a pair of awed little girls who wanted to ask me something.
And so they whispered:
'Mom! Mom! Is he ... is that ... is he ... Dickon?'
Well now.
What's a mother to do?
'He is called Steve, but I think he might just be Dickon too, grown up now.'
And so it was.
The man Steve who came into our lives was very much what we would expect in a grown-up Dickon.
We began an enchanted journey which, for me, will never lose the enchantment - come what may.
Many things have come from that enchanted journey - the most fascinating and lovely being our two daughters to add to our then-family of my first two girls and Steve's little son. They are all grown now, those children ... yet the enchantment has never waned and it is often and often that I think of them as they then were ... and imagine them tending their very own Secret Garden.
Whether or not my daughters remember meeting Dickon in the flesh when they were young girls I have no idea.
But I remember, and cherish the memory.
Because it is such moments that remind us how magical life can be.
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