Frequently Asked Questions
Is the paper from Ms. Hekkity’s shop (in The Decoding of Lana Morris) truly magical, or are the events following the drawings merely coincidences?
Laura responds: The ambiguity is intentional. For me, Lana’s faith in the paper resembles the faith people have in wishes and prayers. I grew up in a church where everyone believed in the power of healing. My father and most of the men I knew carried vials of consecrated oil in case they need to bless someone, which was called “the laying on of hands.” This made me feel very protected even though I knew that if a man giving a blessing felt, while saying the prayer, that the sick person wasn’t supposed to be healed, he couldn’t say, “Be healed.” Something was supposed to move through the person who was saying the prayer, and then he would know what to pray for.
I think wishes on stars, dandelions, birthday candles, and pennies thrown into fountains are a secular form of prayer--religious or not, we still need a ritualized way to ask for things, even if, as often happens in fairy tales, what we ask for is wrong. One afternoon when I was about six, my mother decided to go on a long bike ride and I desperately wanted to go. My mother rightly said I was too little, and she rode off without me. I was furious, and I shouted something about wishing she would die. A short time later when my mother rode into the driveway, her legs and arms were bloody from skidding along a gravel road. I believed I had wished the crash on her.