1
Magnolia Trees

When I was a little girl, I had my own magnolia tree. No one else in the world was invited underneath her canopy of waxy citrus leaves. She was all mine. My fortress, my empire.

Under the leaves of a mighty Mississippi magnolia, you can become anyone you want. A pirate or sprite. A wicked witch or withered old man whose only job is to keep the lanterns burning and whisper to weary travelers the secrets of traversing the hidden passageways of the kingdom.

Inside my big laurel I was the boy with a sword and stone—and a princess fairy for good measure. I splattered stars in the sky, robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, and waited in my tower for Prince Charming to come with true love’s first kiss. The plans for my life were carelessly and passionately concocted under the limbs of the mighty magnolia tree in my grandparents’ backyard. This is where I learned to dream. I was going to be a board-game inventor, newspaper editor, voice animator, professional whistler, fashion designer, billionaire-millionaire. And I was going to perform on stages.

I learned to sing in the branches of that magnolia tree. I was fearless and my audience free. The magnolia tree was my Radio City Music Hall, and I was Pavarotti! The magnolia tree was the Olympic floor of life, and I vaulted, danced, tumbled, and dreamed my way across the springy surface with childhood bliss and ignorance. The famous gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi would cheer me on from the upper limbs as if he were cheering on Mary Lou Retton. Olympic gold medals were at my fingertips; the branches held within them every possibility in the world. I was destined for greatness!

I dreamed up my whole life under that tree. And the adults in my life gave me permission to do so—encouraged it even.

Did I want to be a firefighter? An astronaut? A prima ballerina? Or the president of the United States? What college would I go to? What great things would I achieve? What type of world-changing person might I become? How many babies would I have? What was my dream car? And would my husband be a lawyer or doctor or perhaps something nobler like a teacher or preacher? Every woman got married, of course.

In this modern American age of privilege and opportunity, every child seems primed to cure cancer or star on Broadway. At the very least, each child deserves a spot on American Idol or their own reality TV series. I think that’s why my grandmother made sure my sisters and I watched volumes of the old black-and-white Shirley Temple films. “You could do that, Jennifer. You could sing like that little girl.” It was the earliest message I received in my tiny corner of the world: you can become anything you want. And you should want to become someone amazing. It was our inherent right as American children: to be overachieving, exorbitantly paid, famous versions of whomever we wanted to become. To have plans that succeeded if we worked hard enough and fame that exploded if we dreamed big enough. The sky was the limit!

A movie reel of heroes, princesses, fairy tales, renowned athletes, happy endings, and famous people living lifestyles that less than 1 percent of the world will ever enjoy splay their way through my earliest memories. The world is yours for the taking!

Blurring fantasy with reality as if they are interchangeable, everyday possibilities are our society’s blessed curse. Self-made heroes. World-changers. People on a mission, with a plan, in a country where everything is possible if you just try hard enough, work hard enough, and plan far enough in advance.

Do you have goals? Achieve them! Is something standing in your way? Nothing is impossible—just do it!

Under this bold optimism we are sent out to prepare for our future.

Later, as a teenager and young adult raised in the evangelical church, I was expected to decipher “God’s will” for my life and decode the weighty “purpose” for my existence. Not only was I trying to achieve fairy-tale love, success, and happiness, but I was doing so with the burden and confusion of trying to please an all-powerful, invisible God by figuring out His omnipotent will for my life. No. Pressure.

It’s a miracle that any of us makes it past the first grade, much less our early twenties. From the moment we enter the world, we are bombarded with equal parts make-believe and future planning. We are taught to dream big and achieve those dreams with a smile on our face and a solid work ethic oozing out of our back pocket. And I am all for optimistic dreaming and the occasional fantasy, I really am. But shouldn’t somebody, somewhere give a wee heads-up about reality?

You know, the this-is-NOT-how-I-planned-it moments of life?

As privileged children we daydream. We fantasize. We read stories. We perform at Radio City Music Hall—the people on the edge of their seats in awe—and we crescendo. Here comes our big moment when we will bring the world to tears of joy with our giftedness and our beauty and our—

“Dang it, ELLIE! You can’t let Jennifer climb the magnolia tree. It’s dangerous. She could hurt the TREE!”

Reality interrupts.

Reality trumps dreams.

Reality sneaks in and mocks you. You are no princess. There is no castle. And that tree? It is not a stage—a springboard for all that I will become. It is just a magnolia tree in the back of my grandparents’ house, off a gravel road, across from a pond, in a tiny town called Ellisville, right smack-dab in the middle of Mississippi.

I’m just a little girl who might hurt the magnolia tree.

Life is complicated. I learned this much when I was six years old.

With the waxy leaves and citrus smell of the mighty magnolia, you rule everything and everyone. You are the master of your own fate. You make plans that don’t break and dream dreams that don’t crumble. You see the world as it could be, as it should be. And every adult cheers you on, hoping you will be more and do more than he or she ever could. Carpe freaking diem.

But here? In the real world? A decade or two later, you come face-to-face with reality. You are not living in a magnolia tree and you are no more a pirate than those weird British fellas who sing pirate songs on TV.

There are bills. Babies. Boyfriends. Bosses. Beliefs. Life is not as simple as choosing whether to be an astronaut or the president or a rock star.

It is not black-and-white and glossy and perfect, the way the six-year-old mind dreams it to be. Turns out, life is unpredictable. And more times than not, it does not make any sense at all. There are more questions than answers, more in-between spaces than successfully-arrived-at finish lines. It’s all quite complicated. The depth of the human soul is complicated. The depth of human experience is complicated. God is complicated. Families are complicated. Friends are complicated. The church is complicated. Lovers are complicated. Dreaming is complicated. Living in the tension of big dreams and reality is complicated. It’s all cotton candy and nuclear science thrown together in one big pot.

Real life is never as easy as it was underneath that tree. The big dreams and happy endings that teachers and parents and Disney movies prime you for—those types of endings should be talked about in awe, with hushed voices. Big dreams with happy endings are rare treasures, not inherent rights.

And yet, the solution is not as simple as making a choice to be a realist or a dreamer. To dream or not to dream is not the question. A decision that simplistic means cutting off the head or the heart. But God gave us both head and heart, so what now?

I have decided to let them both exist. Bumping into each other, fighting for space, clashing over the rights to the way I will live my life. Let the head and the heart coexist, though it makes little sense. Don’t forsake dreams for reality. Don’t forsake reality for dreams.

The complexity in our existence as humans allows us to embrace both. Without dreams and plans, without vision, the people perish. But don’t make those dreams and plans and hold on too tightly, because when reality bites, it bites hard.

This is where I confess I have no real answers, just a mantra: I will choose to be a dreamer in the face of reality because that is the only way I have found to be fully human. I watch the dreams go up in flames and keep breathing, and dreaming, and trusting that I will become something new all over again. That is where the becoming of all things new is born—in the in-between places.