On New Year’s Day, my husband, my two sons, and I watched the classic Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. (Gene Wilder forever!) In the movie, as the kids enter Wonka’s chocolate room—you know the one with the enormous cream-filled mushrooms and gummy bears the size of babies—Wonka suddenly halts them mid-step with a flick of his walking stick, quietly commanding:
“Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three.”
Stopping kids about to go bananas in candyland is something in itself. And story has it, when the movie was made the child actors were seeing the room for the first time as they filmed. Their excitement and eagerness to explore is real, and much of the scenery was in fact edible, including the chocolate river. The Veruca Salt actress supposedly went so crazy cracking open a chocolate egg that she cut her knee. (See if you can spy a rip in her tights next time).
So why does Wonka stop them? Stop us? I mean, who really knows why Wonka does anything? But suspended there, for just a few seconds—a beat, a blink, a count of three—we can almost feel the thick, sweet air pulse. To me, it encapsulates the magic of potential—that moment before the moment, when anything can happen, good or bad, but hasn’t . . . just yet. Maybe Wonka wants us to stop, before it’s too late, and soak it in.
Watching Willy Wonka on new years day was my six-year old’s idea and felt pretty random at the time, but now kind of makes perfect sense. Going into a new year feels a lot like entering a door in Wonka’s factory, a portal to unimaginable things—projects, friendships, adventures, endeavors . . . the lingering chance you’ll end up the doomed subject of an Oompa Loompa song. It’s not surprising that a lot comes bubbling up this time of year: hope, motivation, gratitude, curiosity, creativity, caution (Augustus could have used a bit more of that).
For some of us, the “new” we are tackling this year is actually old. In my writing life, I’m on the cusp of a thirty-something-year old dream finally come true—my “very own” book being published in February. It’s a time ripe with potential, excitement, and more than a smidgeon of abject fear. Like most things I write, FRIDAY NIGHT WRESTLEFEST is part real life, part imagination, plenty of perspiration, perhaps too little butterscotch ripple. I’m both thrilled and terrified to send it out into the world and to invite others to peek into “my factory,” the introverted little bubble in which I typically create. To paraphrase the writer Anais Nin sometimes the “day c[omes] when the risk to remain tight in a bud [i]s more painful than the risk it t[akes] to blossom.” Taking this on board heading into my own unimaginable in 2020.
So here’s to a new year, whatever it brings! To blossoming and factory opening. To you, and me, and Gene Wilder. Whether cast from spun sugar or yellow wax, whatever it’s brimming with, raise your buttercup high! Hold your breath, make a wish, then by all means go ahead and breathe. Will try to do the same. Cheers!
Happy reading, happy creating, happy 2020!
