Rubik's Cube

Last year, while shopping for a birthday present, I suffered a moment of complete and utter distress. Cold fright, in fact. I was trying to find a gift for one of my parents.

I stood out front of where the games store used to be, only to find in its place, a shop that caters for all of your personal hair removal needs. A shot of panic ran through me and I went directly to the information stand. It simply cannot be gone, I wanted so badly to believe it. I couldn't remember exactly what the store was called but it had to be Games...something. When it wasn't on the poster, desperation crept in. I gulped but refused to give up, resorting to the electronic doo-dah where you enter the name of the shop you are searching for by punching in letters on a screen.

Games World. That was it. It had moved downstairs. PHEW. I rode the escalator to the lower level. Relief flooded my system as I entered beneath the archway patterned with black and white cubes. Thank goodness. Soon, I was surrounded on both sides by good, old fashioned puzzles, draughts and backgammon. Brain-boggling mindgames, Monopoly and Connect 4. Not to mention, Guess Who?

A footnote: the husband and I still refer to the generic characters of Guess Who? as we sit, sipping at our local coffee shop. "She's Susan", I whisper and we giggle. She is. Our laughter builds."He's Alfred". We are laughing so hard people start to look over. But there is no doubt. He is a dead ringer for Alfred.

As I reached for the 1000 piece puzzle, I smiled at the intricate, hand-drawn circus on the box. A piece of my past had been momentarily crushed, then resurrected. I touched a collectors box of dominoes and I was reassured. Dominoes are not just rainy day entertainment. They represent the real values of a time gone by; of long gone afternoons at school holiday programs and family feuds fought and won under friendly fire.

Standing amongst the snakes and ladders, I felt deeply connected to myself; like I had pulled a string that dangled from my stomach, and I just kept pulling until I'd almost reached the end. I am the child I was, the teenager I used to be and the adult I am today, neatly folded and ingeniously contained in the very same package. Like a Rubik's Cube.

Childhood is where our true selves first dreamed. The most fervent of dreams, when we could sense the boundaries, but the edges still blurred. Imagination was king and queen and the future was a distant land to be created, then conquered. We saw the homes we would live in, the possibilities of careers, of friendships, of families. We conjured great, great love stories in a world where we could be both the astronaut and the clown.

This weekend, I set up our easel in the front room and laid an old towel on the floor. I pulled paintbrushes from the cupboard and squeezed primary colored acrylics into a palette. The canvas was blank and I had no idea what to paint. Still I took a deep breath, dipped my brush and reached inside. I started with pink and yellow and let my mind's eye guide me in freefall. I am no Picasso, but I can remember my art smock and some vibrant early works of blue grass, green suns and disproportionate pink people.

Today, as I drive by the beach, the pirate ships of Luna Park sail upside down, and I hear the ticketholders screech with a blend of fear and excitement. Behind sunglasses, I see my reflection in those mirrors that distort you, fat and then skinny, tall and then shorter, and at the traffic lights I am placing ping pong balls into the mouths of clowns whose heads never, ever stop turning. An enormous pink bear, forever unattainable, lures me back to play a game that is not really about winning.

I look out over the bay and what seems like one thousand colored birds fly through the evening sky. I catch my breath as the kites dip and glide, frolick and shimmer as the sun goes down. I imagine the fairy dust that trails in their wake.

Magic, it seems, is not always invisible. And games are much easier to play than puzzles.