Masters at the Wand

Masters at the Wand

By
Jessica Shear


I've been thinking a lot about my family lately. Remember that toy made of iron shavings incased in a thin, plastic tablet? The cardboard below the plastic has a picture of a bald guy named Wooly Willy. With a magnetic wand, you can move the shavings and change his hairdo.

I recently bought my 75 year-old mother a new version where you put hair on the philosophers. Descartes with an up-do...Sartre with a shag. But it all started with putting Willy’s hair on. That’s the analogy I come up with when I think of how, over time, my family has become fragmented by circumstance and geography. We always manage to come together in groups of twos or threes or more, some of us dropping off here and there only to be caught up and carried along in the next sweep of the wand – or the next plane ride, e-mail, phone call.

Putting Willy’s hair on – that bald headed chameleon from a time without XBox and PS3s or even PCs. The guy capable of having a fro or a Mohawk or long dreds. Pull the magnetic wand across the tableau and little bits of magnetic shaving scurry along in clumps, dropping to form a side burn, eyebrow, cowlick, or a jaunty goatee when the magnet is pulled away from the board.

I've thought of more poetic images like sands in an hour glass (“so are the days of our lives”) or grain being sifted – some scattering to the wind – other pieces bouncing to the center of the sieve to form a unit. I thought of a seer’s rocks tumbling from a cup and telling the story of our past and future in the groupings formed. I thought of die being cast, of dandelion pods in the wind, of so many more aesthetically pleasing analogies.

Putting Wooly Willy's hair on is what I keep coming back to.

Here’s the thing – the more times my family experiences change, or moves apart, or faces adversity, the greater the demonstration of love, faith and support. It’s almost as if, divided, we are more together than ever. The time it takes for age-old sibling rivalries and parental annoyances to be rekindled (how fast is a blink of the eye?), is equal to the speed with which we respond to each other when needed. A call goes out, the wand moves over the board, whoever can be of assistance is drawn to the source of need and … voila – Willy gets a toupee.

We are drawn to each other and keep each other covered until the job is done, then we fall back into place. Some of us get pulled along; others fall behind or drop off until the pull is stronger. Those iron shavings on the Wooly Willy board seem to scurry to the magnet, bumping into each other at times, one pushing the other away (polarity will do that in magnets and in families) but we shift, regroup and pull together again.

Putting Willy’s hair on. I suppose having an image to go with the feeling of family unity and changing family dynamics isn’t all that necessary. I also imagine that my Willy and his “do of the day” analogy might be lost on some – but it brings me comfort in an increasingly anxious time; a time when my family is getting older, even as new members are born into it – a time when we move further away from each other, just when we could use the reassurance that close proximity brings, and at a time when I find the older I become, the more I value the memories we create as much as the memories that surface.

Solace is found in the knowledge that, with time, my family really is getting stronger – that we really do come together well. Willy might have a bad hair day – indeed, Willy might even go bald from time to time, but my family members are quite simply, and in fact, most marvelously, masters at the wand.