Stacy Johnson

Neverland Bound

“The second star to the right and straight on til morning.”

I stared at the stars until my eyes grew heavy. My chin rested on the off-white sill that was sprinkled with dust and dead flies swept into its corners. I craned my neck once more to look at the second star to the right, feeling my muscles ache in the effort. The place where dreams are born, time is never planned, and where your heart will fly on wings forever.

That was Neverland’s mission statement, according to J.M. Barrie, though that is too formal talk to describe Neverland’s purpose of preserving childhood. Disney reimagined Barrie’s ideal fantastically in the cartoon musical that became my lifelong obsession. My days before pre- school enveloped my life were spent watching Peter Pan as often as my mother would allow. I wouldn’t sit to watch; I would casually lean back on the green faux leather couch that was wrinkled with years of abuse my siblings pounded into it. I would mouth every word under my breath, and always giggled when Mr. Schmee accidentally shaved the bird’s bottom instead of

Captain Hook’s beard.

I was four when the Neverland fever hit. My nights were filled with sleepless stirrings as I pretended to hear the creaking of the Jolly Roger captained by the dreadful Captain Hook. Nights also consisted of longings to catch a glimpse of the trail of pixie dust that followed Peter’s and

Tinkerbell’s path of flight.

Peter Pan would come for me I knew it. My little four-year-old, tender heart yearned for that day, the day when Peter would shoot through my window, twirl me in pixie dust, take my hand and fly me to Neverland: my ideal home. The place I knew I was supposed to spend my days running carefree, having mud-flinging fights with the lost boys, combating with pirates, and befriending the Indians.

On that particular night when my eyes grew weary and my heart sick with longing, I couldn’t wait anymore. A lost girl wouldn’t just sit around, she would act. I pitter pattered to the kitchen, hoping to find my mom late that night. It was past my bedtime, but I was done with waiting. I was so sure that if I just dreamed hard enough worked hard enough then he’d come for me. I had to prove my worth as a lost girl, and to do that I needed the right set up for him to come find me.

The kind of room Wendy had was what I needed.

I found my mom hovered over a book on the island, her hand cupped her chin and was slowly slipping under the heaviness of her head.

“Mom?” I tentatively whispered, my head peeking out around the archway.

“Honey! What are you doing out of bed?” She startled awake and jumped so high I almost was convinced she had a stash of pixie dust in the pocket of her Big Bird yellow robe. Pixie dust was the stuff you needed to fly, also faith and trust coupled with that.

“I’m sorry, I wanted to ask you something.” I looked down at my tanned feet, now a little hesitant to ask. My mom’s eyes were lined more with annoyance than worry. She surprised me when her face softened, and her lines still shone through despite the dim lighting and her olive tone skin color.

“Ask me what?” She sat back down on the black bar stool and collected her fly away hairs and tucked them behind her evenly shaped ears. She had a nice face, everything seemed even, her striking green eyes and her eyebrows neatly plucked in shape. Her high cheekbones accentuated with the poor lighting made her look more like a model than a mother. But I knew that was further from the truth. She knew she was a mother and she knew how to be one. I approached her knees and put my elbows on the fleshy part above the cap, letting the fluffy robe tickle my arms.

My own striking green eyes matched with hers, I asked, “Well, I need a window seat.”

“A window seat huh? Why’s that?”

“Because I need a place to read.” My approach was very logical, which had always been my way of arguing for things I believed in, though through the many years filled of harsh learning I now know that logic doesn’t always work. Nor does emotion.

She pondered my answer and her neatly trimmed brows scrunched together to find understanding. “Valid, but is that the only reason?”

“Not really. I need a big enough window for Peter Pan to come. My window is too hard to open and he comes to Wendy’s house because the window is large and easy to open. I need a window like that so I can fall asleep next to it waiting for him to come.” This came out more like a plea and a whine instead of an explanation. My mother noticed that too, instead of scolding me or teaching me a valuable lesson she played along with my fantasy. She looked around and lowered her voice and whispered, “but if Peter Pan can get in, that means running the risk of Captain

Hook getting in too.”

At the mention of that horrible pirate I lunged for my mother’s legs and hid my face in the folds of her yellow fuzzy robe, letting the soft hairs embrace my terrified expression. I was frozen there and only moved my lips to speak.

“No! Not him!! We can’t let him come in! What do we do?”

My mother stroked my hair and whispered into it, “Don’t worry, I won’t let Captain Hook anywhere near my precious little girl.” She gently pulled my arms away from her legs, set them at my side and then slipped her own hands around me. She set me on her lap, my face gazing into hers. “How about this? Why don’t we leave the window as it is, and every night after your prayers you can go to your window, look at the second star to the right and make a wish.”

“To Peter?” I asked innocently.

“No, the wish is to the star itself.” She proceeded to sing to me in her rich alto voice, trained with many years of musical practice. “The second star to the right, shines in the night for you. To tell you that the dreams you plan, really can come true.”

I looked up into her soft greens eyes and her love shone out of them like a night light. I nodded, her eyes and mine made a silent agreement that it was time for sleep. I slid off her lap and she grabbed my hand and gently guided me back to my room. I imagined I saw Peter’s insubordinate shadow wink at me as I passed the doors to the music room. As my mom tucked the warm covers under my chin, I muttered to myself, “the second star to the right and straight on till morning.”

“All you need is faith, trust, and pixie dust!”

I jumped from my springy bed and landed with an audible, “Ow.” Just keep trying. Just keep trying! I pushed myself up from the beige plush carpet, now imprinted with my body outline as if outlining where a murder happened, but in this case where the attempt at flight happened. There were two others to match it. I stepped on to my bed standing two and a half feet off the ground and heard it as it shrieked in protest, trying to tell me to give it up. Saying I would never fly.

I had just entered third grade and Mrs. Lefevre was the kindest and most inspiring teacher I’ve ever had. She had soft blonde hair that flowed over her shoulders, magnifying her neat Banana

Republic sweaters. She would often say, “Class, the sky isn’t the limit. There is no limit to what you can accomplish.” I believed her. The sky was not my limit. Peter was going to help me conquer that slight obstacle that so far had boxed me out from Neverland. She believed in me. I believed in Fairies and Neverland and a clever little boy named Peter.

“Faith, trust, and pixie dust,” I muttered in frustration for the fiftieth time, as I stood on my magenta coverlet that draped over my uneven mattress. There was a tiny problem, I didn’t have pixie dust. I had asked many store clerks if they had pixie dust. Both the Walmarts’ in St. George said they didn’t carry it. Target said they would get back to me.

Faith was leaking slowly out of my youthful heart. I had grown some, at least four years’ worth of growing. I lost a couple of teeth. When I lost my first tooth this confirmed to me that fairies were real because the tooth fairy took my teeth and gave me coins in exchange. She left evidence behind lifting my heart in hope. I had left a couple notes attached to my departing teeth begging for the tooth fairy to give word to Peter I was ready whenever he was ready to take me away.

Unfortunately, achy nightly pains were haunting me and causing my legs to extend a few inches.

Everyone seemed thrilled that I was growing, except for me. They would say, “Oh, our Stacy Jo is growing up so big! She’s going to make a fine young woman.” I wished to the second star that it wasn’t true. I wished the pains away, but they still came, I wished the clock to turn back, but it didn’t, and my faith faltered fairly cautiously.

Where was he? He should’ve been here by now. Didn’t he know? Didn’t he know that I’ve been waiting for years. Didn’t he know that I had no desire to grow up. I didn’t want to go to school, I didn’t want to do chores. On Neverland there is no such thing as chores. I had let myself branch out and explore other ways Peter Pan’s story is told and discovered in Hook they don’t even have to cook! They just imagine food and it appears. Luckily, my mom hadn’t turned over the spatula to me. I was far too young and reckless to allowed to cook, especially with my history of being burned.

I wavered on the edge of my small cliff and a burn scar was spotlighted on my hand from a curling iron. Seeing this stopped me, and before I could give another attempt to fly, I let gravity flop me down and pulled my legs into crisscross applesauce on my bed. I sat with the water building up in my eyes. Frustrated that again I couldn’t fly. Frustrated that I had actual responsibilities as an eight-year-old. Homework had started to fill my days more than my imagination. It came like an invasive army, taking all my creativity. For my birthday I got more clothes than toys. The audacity! Let me be a child I screamed in my mind. I will always be a child.

I kicked my feet out from under myself and laid my head down, not caring if it would hit a pillow or not. I sighed so vigorously that it shook the entire bed. “Psh all you need is faith, trust and pixie dust. Yeah right.”

“Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown up things again.”

I timidly entered the huge glass doors that lead into the giant foyer where the school’s emblem was tiled in the center and directly above it was the school’s motto hanging royally, proudly showing its finesse. I had toured this very spot and had visited every classroom on my assigned schedule. But all that training left me the instant my foot hit the ginormous welcome mat splayed upon entrance of the building as if saying, “You’re a big kid now in a big kid school, keep your shoes clean and we’ll help you get a clean education.”

My mother taught me to be courteous from an early age, so I wiped my feet without question.

Hesitating slightly when it was time to step off. One small step for childkind. I took a step and another until muscle memory kicked in and my feet took me to my first class for the first day of seventh grade. I didn’t look to see where I was going, but I let the lemon cleaning spray residue coming off the multi-colored tile filter into my memory.

When the bell for lunchtime finally rang, I jumped into a cloister of girls who I knew. “Finally! People I know and love!” Mckenna and Bailee and Taylor Ann grabbed me tight in a hug exclaiming things like, “It’s good to see you”, “This school is too big”, “I didn’t know a single person in my morning classes”, or “I got lost three times already”. In our group huddle we managed to make it to a table and claimed it as our own. We had all brought packed lunches so none of us had to face the eternal line for school lunch.

It felt good to be with familiar faces. These pals had been with me since my earliest memories.

We were the very first lost girls. They too had tried to fly with me. They also entreated me in my request for watching Return to Neverland on repeat. I was grateful I didn’t have to endure this other kind of growing pain, that of entering middle school, alone.

Not long into lunch I needed to let to find the little girl’s room, but I was later informed by a snobby eighth grader attempting to give me directions that it is called the ladies room here. I cautiously side stepped her after that unpleasant encounter. Her strong body spray wafted in her wake, leaving me to drown in it. I realized it was a bread crumb trail to the room I needed most.

When I entered the ladies’ room, I noticed five girls huddled around the mirror with small bags in their hands. They were giggling like maniacs, so I didn’t give them any heed. When I finished in the stall, I came back out to find more girls with the same little bags pulling out what I thought only models were allowed to put on their face.

Eye shadow caked the sink. Blues, greens, and purples swirled about the white plaster. It looked like tie dye. There were so many girls straining to get mirror space that they kept all the sinks away from my dirty hand’s reach. They were squealing over a new boy that had moved in. I didn’t care about that, I just wanted clean hands. I cleared my throat. Nothing. No one noticed.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. EXCUSE ME!” I didn’t mean to shout, but I didn’t think they would be able to hear me if I didn’t. They slowly turned to look at me. I would’ve said with disdain written on their face, but their faces were so covered up in make-up you wouldn’t have been able to see it.

“Can we help you?” One finally ventured to ask.

“Yes, can I have a sink to wash my hands?”

The see of pink cardigans and miniskirts parted a way to a single sink. I muttered my thanks. I heard whispers and giggles. All eyes were on my face scant of make-up. I could feel the judgement heavy on my shoulders. I felt ashamed, but for what I didn’t know. When I turned the faucet off and moved back to grab a paper towel a girl spoke up.

“You know, you would look a lot better if you used Mascara, but I’m sure you don’t

know what that is.”

I didn’t know what to say so I just left them with my silence and heard giggles follow me out. I ran to the table, which was now a fortress against the cruel world of middle school. Taylor Ann noticed my flushed face.

“Stace, you okay?”

“Yeah. Have you noticed girls in our grade wearing makeup?”

“Yeah, it’s weird huh? Some girls want to grow up too fast.”

“Mmm yeah.”

“Stacy, are you sure you’re okay.”

I nodded distractedly. The rest of the day my thoughts were plagued by their freakish giggles and whispered judgements. When my mom came to pick me up from school, she was bouncing with excitement to hear about my day. I gave her only one-word answers. I rolled down the window and let my head hang out and my hair come undone with the rush of the air spilling in.

I didn’t think I would care what they thought about me, or even about make-up. I was too young to care about that. It seems now like a weak insult, but at that fragile time it fractured my tender heart. I slowly saw an evolution of girls following the trend and I joined them by the end of the year much to my mother’s dismay.

She pleaded with me to forget those girls, to forget about what other people thought of me.

Those talks became more frequent throughout those years. In those moments when she’d catch me in my weakest moments I would look past her shoulder and imagine Peter there comforting me too saying, “Forget them, Stacy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about silly grown up things again.” I wanted to. I wanted to run away with him and forget silly girls and their gossip. My mother said that they will outgrow their silly ways, and that I will too. That was the problem, I didn’t want to grow at all. I was innocent in being okay with who I was before those girls, before thoughts about how I looked penetrated my thoughts with a double edge sword. And as I’ve come to learn, silly girls never outgrow gossip.

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”

This is a big jump, but a jump that needs to be made. My entire middle school and high school were harassed by poor self-image. It took years of telling myself “I don’t care what other people think of me” every day before I believed it. In fact, I still repeat the words to make myself believe.

Before I turned 19, I submitted my papers to volunteer myself as a full-time missionary for the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was shaking the day I got it. That’s a whole other story. To sum up, I was called to Russia, Samara mission. When I first arrived, it was snowing.

When I first met my trainer, she was quiet, and I couldn’t shut up. When I first contacted a stranger on the street, I could only get out hello and looked helplessly back at my trainer trying to keep up with us.

Russia was never my dream. Not even a mission was my dream, but it is where I found my dream. My trainer became my best friend. We had so much in common. We would tell add on stories as we walked. We created our own worlds with our imaginations, stories that we couldn’t wait to get home and put on paper. We were so happy when we would hit the streets creating a story and stopping to testify of Jesus. One of the best periods of my life, and one of the most emotionally draining.

December had slunk into existence again and the frost was already in full swing. I had about five layers on to keep myself from dying of exposure. The snow kept piling on the sidewalk and with everyone walking on it would turn into a thick layer of ice. With the next snow fall it would happen again. No one wasted time trying to clean the sidewalks because it was pointless. Sister

Thomas, my trainer, and I were walking along the banks of the Volga. It was around six o’clock and pitch black. The sun had descended three hours earlier. Only a few people littered the walkway. Most making their way across the frozen river to the hamlet on the other side. We weren’t allowed to put even a toe on (or in, depending on the season) the river.

Sister Thomas turned to me after being rejected by an angry grandpa and said, “You know Sister

Johnson, you’ve got a talent for storytelling. Have you thought about being your career?”

I stopped at her words and almost lost my footing because the constant ice coating the pathway.

“Are you serious?” She nodded encouragingly. “Huh, well I’ve spent the last year studying and working a paid internship to become a medical assistant and coder.” I let this spill over my thoughts and into my dreams as I pondered her suggestion more thoroughly.

I didn’t make my decision until Kazan. Kazan was the city of friendship. The city of two cultures combined in harmony. The Kremlin was a symbol of that. In the center of this 1,000-year-old fortress lies a Muslim mosque and a Russian Orthodox temple. My very first visit there was when spring was slowly making its way to us. Sister Hullinger’s tall frame masked my shot of the view of the river. Her short red hair was going wild in the wind. It hit me then, my dream. It just smacked into me like the stupid pigeons would do back home into my family’s large glass windows. The only thing they left behind was their wingspan imprints in the glass. That was what my dream did for me.

Months later on a trip to Kazakhstan for our routine visa trips I shared my dream with my fellow volunteers.

“I want to be a screenwriter for animation,” I stated proudly and with my head held high, daring them to guffaw.

“And what work for Disney? Yeah good luck there. Your dreams are just that. Dreams.

You are never going to be able to work for a studio like Disney.” I don’t care to name the person who refuted my dreams, so he is just Elder.

“Well at least I do dream instead of settle! All of you have settled. You have a dream job, but you don’t aspire to get it. At least I dare to dream.”

“Well at least we live in reality and not on some cloud pretending fairytales do exist.”

It only stung a little. I repeated in my head a thousand times over, “I don’t care what other people think of me.” Like the chant I used to mutter when I dreamt of flying, “faith, trust, and pixie dust.” Though the Neverland phrase had never worked before. Peter Pan never came to me. I had dreamed hard and wished hard. I wished for it every night, but the dream never came true. I had sacrificed much for Peter. I spent time trying to fly instead of doing homework. I received multiple bruises in preparation to fight pirates. I lost a tooth learning how to wrestle in case I needed to wrestle the ticking crocodile. Those sacrifices I realized later were in vain. Then when sacrifices were made to have great GPA, to save money and get a job, or give time to service to bulk up my college applications it didn’t serve its intended purpose in the end because I ended up going to an open enrollment institution. A college with no university life in downtown Salt Lake

City.

“To live would be an awfully big adventure.”

I decided not to return to LDS Business College. I didn’t want to be a medical assistant/ coder. I didn’t enjoy it. I had decided that path because it was logical and seemed right at the time. I was for sure now that it wasn’t. I thought about BYU. All my family had gone there. It’s where my parents met. It’s their alma mater, and I knew my dad was disappointed that I chose not to apply my senior year of high school. I could make it up to him, and I would have so many ins with what I wanted to do. I applied to BYU in a dinky rented room with an ancient computer we would use to write home once a week in this area in Samara called Bezimonsky. The heater didn’t work, the linoleum was cracking, and it smelled like a drunk Russian man’s body odor. It wasn’t until months later in a different city and a much nicer office space and updated computer that I got my letter. I was so sure I was supposed to go. It was meant to be. It felt right. It wasn’t.

I didn’t get in. All the plans I had for my future were wiped out. The school I wanted to go to was “not right for me” or whatever the lame excuse they wrote in the rejection letter. I had been so sure. So sure, that I was meant to go there. But I had been “so sure” before. And wrong many times before. I had been so sure I was meant to go into the medical field. And so sure that Neverland existed and that I would never have to grow up and face the ultimate pain of disappointment.

I wanted so desperately to call my mom and hear her soothing voice reassure me as she did when

I was four years old that Captain Hook wouldn’t get me. I wanted to hear her voice say that everything was going to be okay, that God had a plan for me. The only thing I could do was email her and get a response the next week. I didn’t want that. I wanted to curl up in her Big Bird yellow robe and let its fuzziness warm my tired soul. I wanted to be four years old again with only one concern of having a window seat for Peter to find me. There was a lot that I wanted, but most things I wanted slipped my grasp, or avoided it completely.

Disappointment is the worst growing pain. Not even the nights I experienced as a child where I would wake up with my shins in pure agony can compare to this mental pain. This is why I didn’t want to grow up in the first place. Not that I knew exactly what this would feel like, but I could imagine the pains of adulthood. Not only imagine, I saw it. I saw the pains firsthand. I saw adults putting up a facade of happiness, but behind their masks was unsatisfaction and pain.

There is no remedy for adulthood, not like there is for night pains. The only true remedy is to suck it up and deal with it, but that never sounded like a soothing remedy I would want to endure. But what is joy when you don’t know what pain and disappointment feels like? Sure, living is a big adventure, but just surviving is not living.

Being alive is being vulnerable. Being alive and living are two different things, though both makes us mortal, we wouldn’t learn, we wouldn’t know joy or pain if we didn’t live. To live and to learn is a wonderful and broken journey. You will never go through life unscathed, but I guess the scars you acquire is what tells your story and most importantly tells you that you’re alive. To live is an awfully big adventure after all.

“You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”

I have dreams every now again of Peter flying through my window, the one I always imagined to have as a four year old. He’d take my hand and say, “I can take you to a place where dreams never die.” And Tinkerbell would twist around me and give me her pixie dust to give me the ability to fly. And we would fly to the second star and straight on til morning. We did fly to morning. That’s when I would wake up and smile and wish to dream it again. Peter would always be there for me in my dreams, and that I realized was all I had ever wanted, and I had gotten that many times over. He waits for me in my dreams, and I for him. For Neverland isn’t a physical place, but a state of sleep in the dream cycle.

For so long I was convinced that BYU was supposed to bring me to the path of my greatest dream. The dream was beheaded before I could even say, “The second star to the right.” That phrase hadn’t helped much anyways. No dreaming or wishing had ever been beneficial, instead it was a useless and fruitless means to distract. No second star to the right had any magical qualities. None of the froofy fairy tales I watched and heard were true. As humans though we want to believe in the things of our childhood, because that is what brought us hope. Ignorance is bliss right? Or maybe dreams of a better life is bliss. Escaping to our own Neverland in dreams or imaginations or hopes gives us enough of a reprieve to continue on.

I didn’t know what the future had written out for me, and I was scared. I still am. I was never meant to be flown to neverland, but to create it for myself. Which I now realized that I have.

Neverland has always been with me. It is with me now, and the now I’m living is an awfully big adventure.

“You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming?

That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”

“It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness.”