I Will Never Say "I Don't Believe".

I think I'm one of those lucky people that has kept a good portion of my childhood imagination active to this day. I still believe (well, I would never say "I don't believe") in a lot of things that people would consider weird and maybe a bit disturbing (cough, cough, fairies, cough, witches), but that's fine by me because believing in them is safer than not believing.

When I was about 7 or so, I had a friend named Brunton, and he was a unicorn. This fact was propelled by my dad who gave me a unicorn book by Robert Vavra, the famous horse photographer. After seeing how taken by unicorns I was, my dad encouraged me to write a letter to the unicorn that he had seen at night, trotting across our snowy backyard that winter. I was so freaking excited, the type of excitement that only a 7 year old can feel.

It took me a month to gather the courage to post that letter on the inside of my bedroom window. I taped it facing out so that the unicorns could read it without having to come into my bedroom which I determined would have been difficult and inconvenient for them. I posted it on a snowy Saturday morning, giving the unicorns ample time to respond to me by the next day. I knew they would come at night, as unicorn sightings never happened during the day. Everyone knows that.

I woke up the next morning, and was disappointed to find that my letter was still in the same spot, and there was nothing telling me that there had been a unicorn around. I waited for days and weeks. I woke up every morning with an excitement in my heart that got me out of bed faster than Christmas morning.

About four weeks passed and then one fine sunny morning something had changed. I looked over at my window expecting my piece of paper to be there but instead, wedged on the outside of my window between the ledge and the frame was a small folded note wrapped in a beautiful green ribbon. I leapt out of bed, ran down the hall, jumped into my winter boots and ran out the front door in my fleece one-piece pajamas (they had horses on them, just for the record). I ran towards my window and took the letter from it's ledge then ran back inside, right back into bed. I grabbed my flashlight, threw my duvet over my head and undid the beautiful green satin ribbon. The paper was crunchy and translucent, it was obviously some kind of magical tracing paper. I read the letter taking in each word with absolute admiration for my four-legged friend. It was filled with secrets about the unicorn world which to this day I have never shared with anyone. This breach of trust would clearly threaten their survival.

The letter was signed Brunton and a small hoof print took up the bottom part of the page. He was out there, he thought I was cool, and I was one happy kid. I didn't tell anyone about my letter until I was a young adult.

Sadly I lost the letter in "The Great Basement Flood of 2005" but it's imprinted word for word in my mind. The whole experience led me towards a love of the mythical world and a belief, (or a refusal to say "I don't believe") in hidden beings.

My dad is a good man.

P.S. Unicorns exist.