MAGIC WORDS
My introduction to the idea of magic words came early.
We were sitting in my mom’s car, parked under a tall thin palm tree outside a pale-cream stucco house on Foothill Road in Beverly Hills. Five-year-old me was squirming with excitement in my favorite smocked yellow party dress and white patent leather shoes, my long blonde hair pulled back tightly with a matching yellow bow. I couldn’t wait to go inside!
I loved birthday parties because they provided one of the few occasions where I could be with my school friends outside of the classroom—to play games, giggle about silly things, and eat the big globs of brightly colored frosting no one else wanted off of everyone’s pieces of cake.
My parents and I lived in a 9,000-square-foot Spanish mansion inside a gated compound on a quarter acre in nearby Beverly Glen canyon. There were no sidewalks. We didn’t know our next-door neighbors. I couldn’t ride my bike around the block to meet my friends or down to the store to buy candy. I only got to be with kids my age at school or other extracurricular activities like ballet or cotillion or horseback riding. That’s why birthday parties were so special. With no lessons to be learned, we were just there to have fun—together.
Other cars were pulling up all around us. I watched my classmates run up the path, clutching their presents, and ring the front bell. I saw the door open and Mrs. Moss usher each one in. But my mother had something to ask before she would let me out of the car: “What are you going to remember to say while you are there?”
That was easy.
“‘Please’ and ‘thank you.’” I knew those magic words. I reached for the door handle.
My mother wasn’t finished.
“And what are you going to do when the party is over?” she queried.
In 1960s Southern California, my salt-and-pepper-haired British mother—born in 1917 in the Edwardian Age to Victorian parents—was a throwback to another era. She sent me to a school where we curtseyed to the principal every morning underneath the American flag. She painstakingly taught me which fork and knife went with what course at fancy dinner parties, and then she watched in despair as I hunched over dinner in front of the TV and shoveled food in my mouth while trading bites with my dad. She was determined that my manners be impeccable with every adult I met. So I knew the answer. But I was way more focused on the party than on my mother’s life lessons.
“I am going to find Mrs. Moss and thank her,” I replied distractedly.
My mother didn’t say anything. She just looked at me, unflinching, waiting for the right answer this time.
I just wanted to go inside and be with my friends. But I turned around and faced her, trying to tame my impatience. I knew I had to reassure her that I knew the lines of my script—the other magic words of childhood politesse that would allow my mom to let me go to the party.
“I will go find Mrs. Moss and say, ‘Thank you for letting me come,’” I said, in what I hoped seemed a genuinely contrite tone of voice.
My mother smiled. “That’s right,” she responded, reassured at last. “Never forget to say those words to the hostess of any party you attend.”
I was already halfway out of the car.
I don’t remember anything else about that birthday party other than the ending. As the other kids were getting ready to leave, I began searching for Mrs. Moss. I walked over and earnestly looked up at her.
“Mrs. Moss,” I politely began.
Mrs. Moss looked down at me expectantly, as though waiting for a request—perhaps another glass of bright red punch or maybe the location of the restroom. She was, like most of the other mothers in our class, at least twenty years younger than my mom. She had big frosted hair and wore a short, brightly colored dress like the ones I saw on television. She was beautiful.
“Thank you for letting me come.”
Her whole face broke into a big smile.
“Why thank you, Victoria. Aren’t you sweet?” she responded, as though truly touched by my remark. “Please come back any time. We would love to have you.”
I beamed back at her, genuinely surprised and pleased by her enthusiastic reaction. The only reason I had gone over to her was that I knew the first thing my mother would ask me was whether I had followed her script. Seeing Mrs. Moss smile, I suddenly wondered if there wasn’t something to what my mother had been going on about all along. Those six words strung together had made this beautiful woman stop and see me in ways that made me stand out from the other kids. They had a magical effect. It was the first time that I understood that certain words could elicit special responses.
From then on, at every party, I always went over and ingratiated myself with every mother by uttering that same polite sentence: Thank you for letting me come. Without fail, their response always seemed to elicit the same genuine delight.
Fifty years later, as I careen through life trying to tick things off my daily to-do list, I still always say “please” and express my gratitude in whatever version of “Thank you for letting me come” seems appropriate. “Please” still always stops people in their tracks. “Thank you” still always elicits genuine delight because gratitude breaks down all walls and connects me with whomever I am speaking. Turns out, as she was in so many ways that irritated the rebellious younger me, my mother was right. There really are magic words.
It’s just that now I understand how the magic works. These are heart-based words. They acknowledge something our heart desires or that our heart has received; they show appreciation for the actions of others. They reflect our hearts out to other hearts. As such, they act as a pause button on the inner monologues usually going through our busy, worried, frantic, anxious, doubtful heads—and return us, however briefly, to the one place every single one of us secretly longs to live: in Love.
When we were little, it sure seemed easier to live heart-based lives. But as we grow up, so much of what we learn in school, in books, and on television begins to lure us into our heads. One particular word seems to be the biggest culprit—the word should.
The older we get, the more we start thinking about how we should act, what we should be feeling, what we should wear, how we should look, what classes we should take, what college we should attend, what job we should want, what kind of relationship we should have. By taking us out of our hearts, and into our worried and anxious heads, shoulding does its level best to erode Love.
Here’s the good news. It can’t. No matter how dedicated we are to our should lists, Love always wins. If (and this is the kicker) we do whatever it takes to keep our hearts open, whether it’s by doing something as simple as saying “please” and “thank you” or by discovering our own special magic word.