Into the Magic Shop Read online

  I had never thought about exactly how much money it would take to make all these things come true. I had no idea.

  “Enough money,” I said.

  Ruth let out a little laugh. “Jim, I need you to say out loud exactly how much money is enough money.”

  I thought about it. I had seen a man drive a silver Porsche Targa by my school often. He must have worked or lived nearby. He looked so cool. I swore one day I would have one just like that. I remembered a classmate whose father owned his own construction company and who had invited me to his house to play. It was huge like a mansion with a large backyard and a gigantic pool and a tennis court. I was going to live in a house like that someday. I remembered my friend’s father lying by the pool wearing a gold Rolex watch covered in diamonds that he took off and laid on the table. He saw me looking at it and told me I could hold it. It was so heavy. He told me it was solid gold. I asked him how much it cost, not knowing it was a rude question to ask. He didn’t blink an eye and said $6,000. That was a fortune in 1968. I couldn’t imagine having that much money to spend on a watch. I told myself that, one day, I would have a watch just like this man had. I remembered later watching Fantasy Island and dreaming about owning my own island. I would grant myself wishes. I wanted to have my crooked tooth fixed so people wouldn’t make fun of it and I wouldn’t be embarrassed by it. I wanted to go to the fancy restaurants, like I saw on television. I wanted to be so rich that places would be named after me. When I had all those things, then I would feel OK. And that’s what I wanted most of all—to be OK.

  “A lot,” I said. “Enough to have everything I want.”

  Ruth didn’t even hesitate after I said this. “How much is enough?” she asked.

  I thought about saying $2 million, but I didn’t want her to think I was greedy. “One million dollars,” I finally said. “That is enough money.”

  Ruth told me to close my eyes. She had me relax my body. She told me to empty my mind of thoughts. Then she told me to open my heart. I still wasn’t sure about the opening the heart business, but I nodded my way through it all. “Now, Jim,” she said, “I want you to see yourself having enough money. See the million dollars in your mind.”

  At first I just saw a room full of money. Stacks and stacks of bills from the floor to the ceiling. Ruth asked me what I was picturing in my mind and I told her.

  “Jim, I don’t want you to see the money. I want you to see yourself as if you have enough money. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not really,” I answered.

  “There are two ways to picture yourself in your head. One way is as if you were watching a movie of yourself. The other way is as if you are looking out at the world through your own eyes. I want you to imagine what the world looks like to you when you have your million dollars. Try to picture the world through your millionaire eyes. Imagine you already have all the money you want. What do you see exactly?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the future. I saw a Porsche 911 Targa. It was silver. But I couldn’t picture anything through my own eyes. I could see myself driving it, but from a distance, like I was watching TV. I saw myself eating in a fancy restaurant. I saw a big mansion, almost like a castle. But when I tried to look at these things as if they were mine, like Ruth said, I couldn’t do it. Everything was like a movie I was watching. And even that was hard to imagine for more than a few seconds.

  “I thought this would be easy,” I said to Ruth, “but it’s hard.” I told Ruth about the Porsche 911 and seeing myself in it like it was a movie.

  “It takes practice and time and more practice. Eventually, you’re going to be able to see the Porsche as if you were driving it. I want you to try and think about how your hands feel against the leather of the steering wheel. What does the car smell like? What does it sound like? Look down at the speedometer and tell me how fast you are going. What is the scenery outside? Is it day or night? What does your body feel like to be driving this car?”

  “I have to imagine all that?”

  “It is a lot of work, but that’s the trick. You can have anything you want by visualizing that it’s already yours. It’s that simple and that hard, all at the same time.

  “I imagined myself coming here to Lancaster this summer. I saw myself in this shop, with my son. I could picture how the sun beat against the glass. I saw my hand in Neil’s. And I saw a young boy talking to me. I created all this in my mind, and made it real. Long before my trip was planned. I didn’t know how I was going to get to Lancaster, but I believed that I would be in Lancaster this summer. In my mind I was already here.”

  “You saw me?” I asked.

  “I saw myself spending time with a young boy. At the time, I thought it would be my grandson. But it didn’t turn out that way. It turned out that it was you I needed to spend time with. You see, Jim, I opened my heart before I imagined this trip. I opened my heart and imagined that I would be where I was needed with someone who needed me. Then I trusted it would happen. Things don’t always happen the way we think they will, but I’ve learned that they happen exactly the way they’re supposed to happen. I don’t know why I was supposed to spend this time with you. But I know there’s always a reason. And I know if I’m supposed to spend time with my grandson it will happen. Jim, there is an old saying: ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’ You were the one who was ready.”

  I never really learned that much about Ruth’s personal life, but forty-five years after this conversation I would learn that Ruth was able to spend the following summer, 1969, with her grandson, Curtis, in Lake Isabella, a little over a hundred miles away from Lancaster. She worked her own magic. And like me, maybe it happened because now he was ready.

  Ruth sent me home that day and told me to practice the first three tricks she had taught me, to pay special attention to opening my heart, and then to write a list of everything I wanted to create in my life. “I want you to write a list of ten things you want. Think about what you want to create. Write down who you want to be. And then bring it with you tomorrow.”

  “I thought I got three wishes, not ten wishes.”

  “Jim, you can have as many wishes as there are stars in the sky. But we’re going to start with the ten you bring with you tomorrow.”

  Ruth had never given me written homework before, but I did exactly as she said.

  Don’t get evicted.

  Go on a date with Chris.

  Go to college.

  Be a doctor.

  A million dollars.

  Rolex.

  Porsche.

  Mansion.

  Island.

  Success.

  I handed Ruth my list the next day. She read through it. “Hmm” was her only response.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Jim, did you open your heart before you made this list, like I asked you to?”

  I nodded yes. It was the first and only time I ever lied to Ruth, but I wasn’t quite sure how to open my heart. I didn’t feel like I really understood that part of what Ruth taught me, and I was so anxious to learn how to get anything I wanted that I didn’t want to ask her or have to go backward. I only had six more days to learn how to make the things on my list come true.

  “I didn’t know you wanted to be a doctor.”

  It was Job Day in the fourth grade—the day when professionals from the community come to talk about what they do for a living. We’d already had a fireman and an accountant and an insurance salesman—none of whom was of much interest to me. The fireman was pretty cool, but he said his job was mostly a lot of waiting around for something bad to happen. The next man was different. He smiled at each one of us. He was a doctor, a pediatrician, someone who only took care of children.

  “It’s an honor and a privilege to care for people who are sick, especially children. It takes a very special type of person to do this job,�
� he said to the class. “When I was a kid, I had severe asthma and almost died. My mother took me to the doctor, and I’ll never forget his smile. As soon as I saw him I knew I wouldn’t die and, at that moment, I knew I was going to be a doctor.”

  He was glowing as he stood in front of the class and talked about his job. “But it’s not a job,” he said. “It’s a calling. A calling that is not for everyone. A calling that requires those who do it to go above and beyond a regular nine-to-five job. You have to work long hours because people are depending on you, and if you fail them it could mean they die.” I looked around the room to see if anyone else was as mesmerized as I was. He must have seen me gaping at him, because after his talk ended we went to recess, and he walked up to me and asked me my name.

  Although I was a very good reader and did well in some subjects, I wasn’t that great a student. I didn’t understand the need to study, and while my parents encouraged me I didn’t have a place to study or anyone to help me when I needed it. It’s hard to focus when a television is blaring or an argument is in progress. My teacher seemed to focus her efforts on the brightest students or those who were always prepared. I can’t remember one time when I was asked why I was late or why my homework wasn’t done. Usually, the only time I would speak up was to tell jokes that often got me into trouble, and other times I just felt invisible. But for this man, I had a million questions.

  “Did you ever see anyone die?” “What about being born?” “Do you give shots?” “What do you do when kids cry in your office?”

  I asked him a dozen unrelated questions about life as a pediatrician, and he took the time to answer every single one of them. When it was time for him to leave, he shook my hand like I was an adult.

  “Maybe you’ll be a doctor one day yourself.”

  I couldn’t imagine going to college or becoming a doctor, it seemed impossible, as far-fetched as my walking on the moon one day, but he didn’t seem like he was joking. He looked me directly in the eye and said, “I can tell that you care, and I can tell that you would be a really good doctor. Don’t count yourself short.” He smiled at me again as he turned and left the room.

  “Don’t count yourself short” repeated itself in my head. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I didn’t count myself short—it was more like I hadn’t thought there was anything to count at all.

  But in that moment, with no one in my family having ever even gone to college, I decided this was exactly what I was going to do. Become a doctor. I immediately imagined being called over the loudspeaker in the hospital like I had seen so many times watching Ben Casey on TV. It’s not lost on me now that he was a neurosurgeon. Coincidence? Who knows? But, I will tell you to this day, I can still with complete clarity see him in my mind’s eye and hear that loudspeaker.

  I told Ruth, “Yes, I want to be a doctor.” Then I corrected myself. “I know I’m going to be a doctor.” I had no idea how to go about making that happen—I had never even dreamed of going to college, much less medical school—but at that moment I knew it would happen.

  Ruth clapped her hands together as if I had just done some amazing feat.

  “That’s it,” she said. “That’s exactly it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “That knowing. You have to know you will be a doctor and then you have to picture it in your head as if you already were a doctor. See the world through your doctor’s eyes.”

  I closed my eyes and tried. It was hard. I could just barely see myself as a doctor, looking down at my white coat. But it was fuzzy. “It’s hard to see.”

  “That’s why you have to relax your body and clear your mind of all thoughts first,” said Ruth. She walked me through the first exercises again. “Now that I have your attention, it’s time to set your intention.”

  “My what?” I opened my eyes.

  “Your intention. If you relax your body, clear your mind, and open your heart—it’s easy to set a clear intention. You intend to be a doctor. You are very clear on that.”

  I closed my eyes again and thought, I intend to be a doctor. I clearly intend to be a doctor. I am intending to be a doctor, clearly. I wasn’t sure which one was better so I thought them all.

  “Now, Jim, imagine in your head you are looking through a window. The window is all fogged up. Like the inside of a car when it’s cold outside. Think of your intention as the defrost setting. Set your intention over and over again so that the window gets clearer and clearer. Less and less foggy. On the other side of that window is you as a doctor. The more clearly you can see the image through the window, the more likely the image will come to pass in real life.”

  I tried over and over again, and eventually, I could see myself in a white coat through the window in my head.

  “Keep at it,” said Ruth. “Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. Whatever you can see clearly through that window in your mind will become real. And the more you can imagine you already have what’s in that window, or you already are what’s in that window, the quicker it will happen.”

  “It’s really real?” I asked Ruth. “You promise this magic really works?”

  “I promise,” said Ruth. “I have never lied to you, Jim. And I’m not going to start now. But it takes work, and some things will take longer to happen than others. And sometimes it won’t happen exactly the way you expect. But I promise you, everything you put on your list, everything you feel in your heart, everything you think about and imagine with your mind, if you truly believe, if you work very hard, will happen. You have to see it and then you have to go after it. You can’t just wait in your room. You actually have to go get good grades, and go to medical school, and learn how to be a doctor. But in some mysterious way you will also be drawing it to you, and you will become what you imagine. If you use your mind and your heart, it will happen. You have my word.”

  I went home that night and decided I better write down everything Ruth had told me this summer so I didn’t forget. I took out my notebook from my box of special things. I turned to a blank page and wrote “Ruth’s Magic” across the top. I turned the page and wrote down everything I knew about relaxing my body, calming my mind, opening my heart, and setting my intention. I wrote down everything I could remember Ruth saying, even if I had no idea what it meant. I made notes in the margins and on the sides. I didn’t want to forget anything. I copied my list of ten things I wanted into the notebook.

  I read the first thing on the list, “Don’t get evicted.” I read over everything Ruth had said about this last trick. She told me to think of anything I wanted, repeat my intention over and over to myself, and then create the clear picture in my mind. I wasn’t supposed to think about what I didn’t want. I didn’t know how to imagine not being evicted.

  We had been evicted before. The police had come and given my mom the eviction notice, followed by people hired by the landlord to throw our things on the street. . . . I didn’t want to imagine this over and over again, and how do you imagine it not happening when you can see it happening in your head? All our neighbors and my friends watching us get thrown out. No place to go. Being taken to a homeless shelter and all of our belongings taken away to the garbage dump. I didn’t want to relive it even one time in my mind. It was too painful.

  I thought about what Ruth said, and decided to imagine the opposite. Every day for the rest of the week, whenever I wasn’t with Ruth, I spent hours creating a vision of my family being in our home. I saw us paying the rent. I saw us happy. I cleared away the foggy window with my mind.

  At times I found myself still imagining the sheriff knocking on the door. It was a horrible knock. Loud and harsh and impossible to ignore. I knew what that knock meant. I also knew that the first of the month was approaching quickly. Ruth would leave, and I would end up without a home. Both images did battle in my mind, but every day I cleared the foggy window more and more and saw my mom paying the rent,
and us staying in our apartment. In my head I kept saying over and over, “The rent will be paid. We will not be evicted.”

  Ruth and I practiced every day that week, up until our very last time together. She would talk me through visualizing myself as a doctor, and I would go home and practice visualizing the rent getting paid. My dad had said he was expecting some money to come in for a job he had done a long time ago, but I didn’t believe him. I had heard those stories before. Eviction was looming, but I fought against it with the only power I had—Ruth’s magic.

  I said good-bye to Ruth on a Saturday morning. She hugged me for a long time.

  “I’m proud of you, Jim.”

  “Thanks, Ruth,” I said. “Thanks for everything you taught me.”

  Saying good-bye was awkward. It seemed like it should have been a bigger deal than it was. Neil had been with a customer and had just sort of waved me off. Ruth was talking about waiting at the store until Neil could close up and take her to the airport. And then that was it. I got on my bike and headed home.

  I was in my room when I heard the knock on the front door. It startled me. I had been thinking about Ruth leaving. Another knock. It sounded angry and insistent. My stomach turned over, and I could feel my heart start beating fast in my chest. I felt stuck to the floor. The knock started up again. I knew my mom was in bed, and my dad and brother weren’t home. I had to answer that knocking. There was no one else.

  I looked through the kitchen window, expecting to see the deputy sheriff’s patrol car in front, and the deputy at the door. Instead there was a man. A man in a suit. I opened the door, and he looked at me, then asked for my father.

  “He’s not here,” I said.

  “Please tell your father that I am sorry I couldn’t pay him before. Please give him this envelope, and please thank him for his patience.”

  He handed me the envelope and walked away. I shut the front door and looked down at the envelope in my hand. It had a name and address written on the front of it. I turned it over. It wasn’t sealed, so I lifted the envelope flap. I could see money inside. Lots and lots of money.