"Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it." ~ J.M. Barrie
I had nearly given up hope that we would come up with a theme for Trunk or Treat that the whole family could agree on when, with days to spare, I tossed out one final idea. "Peter Pan?" I suggested tentatively, turning to Christian to ask if he would be willing to assume the lead role. Imagine my surprise when 16-year-old Carson immediately volunteered, adding that he would do it as long as I made his costume.
"You will?" I gasped with such delight that all the children laughed. This year brought two more surprises in the form of Joe, who agreed to join the fun as Captain Hook, and Carson's sweet girlfriend, Mallory, who was a darling Wendy Darling. Here are a few pictures of our Neverland crew, with quotes from Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie's classic story Peter Pan.
"Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom."
"Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee."
"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it."
"To live will be an awfully big adventure."
"When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies."
"I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg."
"The boat drew nearer. It was the pirate dinghy, with three figures in her, Smee and Starkey, and the third a captive, no other than Tiger Lily. Her hands and ankles were tied, and she knew what was to be her fate. ... Yet her face was impassive; she was the daughter of a chief, she must die as a chief's daughter, it is enough."
"If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing."
"Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars."
"Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time."
"I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and then away we go."
"It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for the next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day."
"She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly."
"Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older, and then before you know it, they're grown."
"You just think lovely wonderful thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air."
"I say, Wendy," he whispered to her, "always if you see me forgetting you, just keep on saying 'I'm Wendy,' and then I'll remember."
"All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust."
