When I was ten years old, I watched a movie that, to this day, is still my favorite. And perhaps it will always be. The little girl in it was also ten years old. For reasons I am still uncovering, this movie entwined around my heart like the vines in its gardens. I am talking about the 1993 version of The Secret Garden.
It is an incredible story, really. To me, it is a tale of real magic and the ways we encounter it at various points in our lives. I didn’t read the book as a child, I only saw the movie. But I definitely have a lovely copy of the book now. It is one of those stories that is always with me, in so much of what I do in the world.
So, the magic! I would say my inner child related most to this story. The soft, sensitive, raw, frightening, “other”, wild one no one fully saw—I could not find where that part of me fit into our human world so it went away. For the character of Mary, this was represented through her outer being and experience, so that idea is a little more concrete and tangible for the audience. After she navigated an early childhood of death, confusion, displacement, and loneliness, it was a magnificent garden, its enchanting animals, and the true love of others’ that healed her. They made the world a place where she felt she belonged again.
Scenes from the film
If there is one thing I know now, decades later, it is this: The natural world, and love—they are high magic. They are potent beyond our imagining. When we fall into them, they change us and remind us what is real. Our time on this earth gives us the gift of endless opportunities to find our way back to them. A beautiful, quiet, gothic English story captured these ideas where they will always sit, waiting for whoever watches or reads. Yes, magic indeed.
I dearly love the romantic imagery from the late 19th + early 20th centuries—late Victorian, Edwardian—another story unto itself. That is the time period of The Secret Garden so the clothing and setting is absolutely a dream. Mary wore a series of excellent hats, and one of them simply popped into my head recently, bright and fresh as if I just saw it. It was a rusty red tam that she wore when it was cold, adventuring around the foggy labyrinth of Misselthwaite, when she first found the garden. I am going to knit one as a little gift for my inner child, to remind her that the garden always awaits her flourishing.
