Quick note: This newsletter is about the intersection of travel and motherhood, which usually means I write an essay about both of those things. But sometimes I’m gonna break the rules since they’re my own rules and give you an essay that’s only about one of those things! Wild, I know.
I couldn’t wait to take my daughter to her first movie in a theater. We had just celebrated her 6th birthday with a princess party, complete with one of those cakes where your husband sticks a Barbie into a skirt meticulously crafted from layers of sculpted sheet cake. So when Disney’s new movie “Wish” came out a week after her birthday, the timing was perfect.
Asha, the protagonist of “Wish,” is not a princess. She’s a passionate, idealistic teenager living on the island kingdom of Rosas, where residents entrust their deepest wish to the narcissistic sorcerer King Magnifico. But she has all the qualities that my daughter seems to admire in her favorite princesses. She is kind and courageous. A loyal friend. An impressive singer with enviable dresses and animal friends. Most of all, she is the hero of her own story. Asha is something perhaps better than a princess, because she is all of these things without the unattainability of royalty.
Leading up to our big movie theater date, I peppered my daughter with variations of the same question: “Isn’t this exciting? What are you most excited about? Are you so excited?” To which she would shrug, “I guess?” But as we took our seats in the theater, she bounced on the edge of hers, beaming and asking if I thought the screen was even bigger than daddy. It wasn’t the movie I was excited to watch, but her experiencing something for the first time. So as the lights dimmed and the iconic castle filled the screen, I wasn’t expecting a Disney movie to speak to me. And I certainly didn’t expect it to hold a mirror up to my own great wish.
When I was pregnant with my son, my second child, I feverishly began working on a book proposal, knowing the writing window I’d recently eked out of my daughter’s preschool schedule would soon vanish. I told myself I’d write when my son napped; he took exactly 29-minute naps until he was 8 months old. Now he’s 2, and I am still working on my book proposal. At the end of October, I vowed to finish it by the end of the year; then our school district’s teachers went on strike for almost the entire month of November. And so on.
As a mother who is also a writer—or who tries to be a writer in the slim margins between potty-training and story-reading, between quelling tantrums and baking muffins—my desire to write often feels like a burden, one I might be better off without. I have lamented more than once to other mother-writer friends, “Sometimes I wish I just didn’t want to write a book, then I wouldn’t feel this constant angst.” It does seem, at times, like it would be easier to not want what feels unreachable. To just forget the dream. Silence the voice. Extinguish the light.
And then I found myself sitting in a dark movie theater, as a Disney villain does precisely that. King Magnifico is beloved by his people for taking their wishes for safe-keeping—and then granting the very few he deems beneficial to the kingdom. This is all in their best interest, he assures them, for now they are relieved of the burden of their wish: the work it would require to make it come true, and the painful possibility of failure. (Enter me, feeling seen.)
But here’s the problem, as Asha realizes when she interviews with the king to become his apprentice and assist in protecting wishes and making them come true. Most of the kingdom’s wishes will never be granted, she learns, and when someone hands over their wish to King Magnifico, they completely forget it, so they relinquish the chance of making it come true for themselves—which means they also give away their essence, their raison d’être, and an irreplaceable source of joy.
You watch this play out onscreen in a wish ceremony, when 18-year-olds and newcomers to Rosas give their wishes to the king. One’s wish is a glowing orb in their chest, and the moment it leaves their body, they fade. Their shoulders slump, their smiles disappear. Simon, Asha’s only friend to have turned 18, has been a sleepy, boring shadow of himself ever since he gave up his wish.
Never has a Disney movie resonated so deeply (or at all) with my soul. This new fairytale’s message about what wishes give us even while we are waiting on them and striving towards them was one I didn’t know I needed to hear. Though my book-writing dream may feel like a burden during this intensive season of mothering young children, the wish itself is a gift. The achievement of the goal, the dream coming true, is not the true value of a wish. That writerly angst I feel might also be called longing, which might also be called hope. And hope, as Emily Dickenson wrote, “is the thing with feathers—that perches in the soul.” A dream is not a torment but a treasure.
When Asha suggests that King Magnifico could just return the ungranted wishes, he refuses—controlling the greatest desires of his people’s hearts being a politically savvy way to maintain power. This is the wrong that Asha sets out to right. Returning the wishes to their rightful homes, the hearts of their wishers. While my daughter squeezed my hand, gasping at the king’s dark magic and cheering for Asha, I remembered a much bigger wish of mine. The one to become a mother. The one I thought might never come true after being crushed by a miscarriage. I remind myself of this as I search my days for time to write: The very things that complicate my book wish are my two greatest wishes already granted.
In a 100th anniversary tribute to the grand tradition of Disney characters before her, Asha sends a wish up to the heavens and wrangles herself a magical star right out of the sky. And while the star aids in her quest to save the wishes, it does not magically resolve everything. Asha, in the end, must find that power within herself and her community.
“Mommy, are shooting stars real?” my daughter asked me a few days after our movie date. “And if you wish on them, will it really come true?”
Yes, I want to tell her. I love the spark of her imagination, that she still believes in magic. But I also want her to believe in the wonder of herself, her power to make her own dreams come true. My daughter has a dollhouse full of Disney princess Barbies—with Asha on her Christmas list—but if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she is resolute. A mommy and a writer. So, who will inspire her to be the hero of her own story? Who will show her what it looks like to wish upon a star and never give it up? Disney can only go so far. I know who she’s really watching.
Who I’m Reading
100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, by Sarah Ruhl.
“There was a time, when I first found out I was pregnant with twins, that I saw only a state of conflict. When I looked at theater and parenthood, I saw only war, competing loyalties, and I thought my writing life was over. There were times when it felt as though my children were annihilating me … and finally I came to the thought, All right, then, annihilate me; that other self was a fiction anyhow.”
That quote is always popping up in essays about being a writer and a mother, which seemed like a sign I should probably go ahead and read the book it comes from. I discovered this gem (and many others) too:
“I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion.”
What I’m Writing
Speaking of that vow to finish my book proposal by the time the ball drops … I think it’s actually going to happen! Wish on that star, y’all. Embrace the intrusions of life. Allow yourself an extension of your self-imposed deadlines. And then sit in that chair and keep working.
Where I’m Going
About twice a year, I take myself on a 24-hour writing retreat to a very whimsical, very Portland hotel called McMenamins Edgefield (which also happens to be where I got married). I hole up in a cozy library, order room service, and take breaks in a saltwater soaking pool. And I try not to spend too much time looking at photos of my kids and missing them. Highly recommend staying here if you find yourself in Portland (the writing part is optional).
Thank you for supporting my writing, I so appreciate you being here. If you enjoy this newsletter, would you share it with a friend? They can subscribe right here.
XO,
Kaitlin
Kaitlin I absolutely adore this story and the comparison of the movie Wish and your own life. Your writing is wonderful and I really do look forward to reading your book once it is published. Just take your time and embrace the moments you have with your children as that is the most important thing!
"The very things that complicate my book wish are my two greatest wishes already granted." YES. You are such a gorgeous writer and thoughtful mother. Having read many of the essays in this book of yours, and the proposal in progress, it seems to me an absolute given that it is already on its way to its publisher home, it's just a matter of time.