It’s the second day of the New Year. The linens are clean, the animals are fed and watered, the house is quiet and warm. Despite the very valid arguments against New Years resolutions — why set yourself up for failure in the middle of winter, when the world and your body just want to sleep? — I find myself sitting at the altar of Everyday Magic, rededicating myself to her with maternal devotion. We barely made it out alive this year, and the new one unfurls before me with more questions than answers. While there have been times in the past where I could have accepted letting go, it feels completely impossible now to envision a world without EM, even as the possibility looms before me.
Truthfully, Everyday Magic has had more hard years than easy ones at this point. This isn’t the first time I’ve feared for her future or broke a sweat looking at her bank accounts. This morning I asked the Tarot how we move forward and pulled the Nine of Wands. We’ve been at it for almost nine years now and have been through so so much together. I find myself wanting for her what every mother wants for their child — to see adulthood, to outlive me. Whatever I have left in me before the inevitable 10 of wands burnout, I will burn for her.
Although the path hasn’t always been smooth, I always come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have been any easier without her. I wasn’t cut out for corporate life. I couldn’t have used the money left to me from my mother’s death for anything but creating magic. And, no matter what happens next, it has supported me, kept me company, and revealed a whole world of magic to me for almost a decade.
Zadie recently underwent surgery to remove a Mast Cell Tumor on her side. If you had asked me a month ago what my singular wish it in this world was, I would have unequivocally answered “a healthy dog.” Even if it cost every cent in my bank account. Even if I had nothing else in this world, including Everyday Magic. Sometimes clarity is a sharp knife. I didn’t look at our numbers and I barely worked. I laid beside her precious body and prayed into her incision sites. I cried to the Divine Mother. I asked Mars to stay his hand.
My mother lost a child between me and my brother, a boy named Aaron Gabriel. Her most acclaimed article was about this pregnancy, learning of his deadly birth defect and coping with the news. She wrote something to the effect — “there are so many things that need to go right, you start to wonder how a healthy baby is ever born at all.” She gave me — her firstborn — the middle name Eliana, “My God has answered” in Hebrew.
I reflected on how generous Everyday Magic has been to me. The grace she’s repeatedly shown me over what should have been fatal mistakes. How quickly she became self-supporting and took on a life of her own. The way she adapted alongside me, hopped from state to state, expanded to fill a warehouse and shrunk to fit in a closet. The freedom I’ve had to take time off, travel, write a book, do exactly what I want to do to make a living... it’s not until I started to feel her falter that I stopped to appreciate the magnitude of the miracle, what a prayer answered this has been.
The coven built altars, burned candles, printed out photos of Zadie and covered them with healing herbs. Witches around the world put glasses of ice cubes on their altars, willing Zadie to see another summer. My inbox flooded with messages of support. The Everyday Magic candle revealed the full force of its light and life-giving nature. The rainbow obsidian Divine Mother’s never left our bed. The Sunday Reading anchored me into community. My colleague and best friend drove us to every single vet appointment, cooked Zadie homemade batches of food, and cleaned her blood off of the floor when I couldn’t.
Only love is real, and our most potent currency is time. If my time spent on this earth amounts to me being entirely loved and supported in one of the darkest moments of my life, I have spent my time well.
This year I endeavor to show up for Everyday Magic with the same wholehearted presence she has always afforded me. As an ultra Scorpio, I’m not going to keep something alive if it wants to die. But the more nuanced lesson I’ve had to learn is not to kill something if it wants to live. Not to count myself out of the game until it’s over.
The things is, and maybe I’ll kick myself for saying it, but I know we’ll be okay — I just know it, the way women know certain unknowable things. Maybe the byproduct of surviving some unsurvivable shit. I know how to adapt, pivot, shift, suffer a thousand small upward failures. I’m not proud and I don’t fear rejection. My only hope is, at the end of all of this, that Everyday Magic have had more easy years than hard ones. A mother’s wish.
By Bakara Wintner
