A magic life

He came home from work that muggy summer day and asked my mother to come into the kitchen. He wanted to talk to her. The tone was as if someone died, but there was also a strange upbeat feeling in his voice. His boss had told him they were closing the plant and he wanted to transfer him to Chicago to run that location. He looked upon this as a sign – a little bit of divine intervention. What better time to try what he had wanted to do since he was a little boy. He was going to be a magician.

They came out of the kitchen and called my brothers and I together. He told us he was quitting his job. My mother had tears in her eyes. At thirteen, I know this was not a decision they had reached together. We would have no more season tickets to sports events and theatre, the country club would get along without us and things would be different, very, very different. He had been the plant manager for Niagara Forged Parts for years. Now, he wanted to play with linking rings and cups and balls and he wanted to ask us to “pick a card.” I didn’t want to pick a card.
In my adolescent mind things deteriorated rapidly. We went from weekends attending the University of Michigan football games to spending our weekends traipsing across the state to Colon, Michigan, the Magic Capitol of the World.

Other things changed, too. I became more self-conscious about my family being different from my friends families. Getting off the bus one day, he was in the front yard juggling – a circus act in my front yard. Like an act on the Ed Sullivan show, juggling brightly colored balls and clubs – all begging not to fall. I was so embarrassed to have my friends see this juggler in my front yard. Their fathers wore suits and ties and went to offices. I wondered what they juggled. My best fried Karen Geer’s family was so unlike mine. They were American Gothic with a little Ward and June Cleaver to balance it out.

Sometimes our lives were like those balls, as long as he kept everything in the air, everything was fine. Don’t stop – might fall, keep going – don’t hit the ground.

Then there was the phone call. “Is Mr. Bubbles in?”
“No, my father is not home right now. May I take a message?” I asked.
“Well, Miss Bubbles……………” was the response.
I didn’t hear another word. MISS BUBBLES? It sounded like a stripper! Yes, my dad was Mr. Bubbles, at least on the days he wasn’t the Wizard of WAAM, our local radio station. I was probably; no I was certainly, the only kid at Ypsilanti High School with a mummy in the basement and a guillotine in the dining room.

My friend’s existences were boringly wholesome. I longed at times for boring. Please just let me fit the mold, at least the 1972 southeast Michigan mold.

Now, thirty-five years later, he is all grown up at Seventy -one years young. He entertains and fools the eye. He is a magician, Master of Ceremonies, a clown, close-up-performer, sleight of hand wizard; husband, brother, son and my father. No one loves him more than the children. They sit wide-eyed in the front row when he is producing silks or feather flowers from thin air. They love his clever deceptions, the wonder and mystery of not knowing all the answers. They push their way to the front of the crowd to get the best seat, taking it all in, lost in the wonder of magic. They see him as the Pied Piper, ready to whisk them away to a better world.

Did he really want to be a magician when he grew up, or did he really just not want to grow up? When I asked him why, his answer was quite simple.

"The trick," he whispered to me, "is not to make a living out of magic. The trick is to make magic out of living."