A Little Bit Of Pixie Dust

Saw the tail-end of the movie Hook yesterday--I think they've been running it on HBO for the last few days. I'm ashamed to admit I've never seen the film in full, but I like to think the main point of the story can be found in those critical final scenes: Hook killing Rufio, a grown-up Peter Pan (played, of course, by the ever-lovable Robin Williams) facing Hook for the last time and utterly humiliating him, and of course Peter and his kids making their way back home. 

It's a timeless tale of the triumph of courage over fear and good over evil, and an affirmation of the old adage, "Home is where the heart is."

But for me, the most touching and beautiful scene in that whole final reel is that moment that Peter has with Tinkerbell, right before he wakes up in the "real world," having left Neverland for the very last time. In it, Tink says: 

"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting."

That pretty much killed it for me. I always believed that Tinkerbell was the most pivotal character in the tale of Peter Pan (and not just because I played her in a summer stage workshop when I was six). In a story about magic and the power of faith, Tinkerbell is magic, and she personifies the idea that losing faith in something (or someone) is losing that thing (or person) entirely. It's a lesson everyone should remember no matter how young or old. 

As a kid, I loved the thought of fairies flitting around in glittering pixie dust just at the corners of our eyes; as an almost-grown adult, I love the idea that magic exists in real life if only we look hard enough.

We're probably never going to be visited by an unaging boy in tights and his fairy companion in the middle of the night, no matter how long we wait. But that doesn't mean we can't go on any adventures of our own. We're all given a little store of pixie dust to work with. The question is, do we deny it's there and end up losing it for real... or do we sprinkle it over our happy thoughts and take flight?