Simba! This is your Destiny.

Once upon a time, there was a girl. The particulars of her backstory are not important; just know that she is pretty, her hair (long, of course) is always impeccable, and somehow--even in the absence of food, water, and hygiene--her delicate cheeks maintain a rosy glow, giving her the dewy, half-starved quality of one who splits her time between cross-stitching tea cozies and singing to woodland creatures. Little birds dress her in the morning. Her parents are both mysteriously absent, her mother having died of a quick, painless illness, and her father off on some sort of journey-quest to remarry a woman who will make the girl's life miserable--but only enough to ensure that no one's lipgloss gets mussed. The girl falls fast asleep at the fireplace, not a Tempur Pedic mattress in sight, and is up with the sunrise: dreaming about the prince who will, at any moment, march into the arena (wearing tights, presumably) and whisk her away to a lifetime of singing on-key. There will be roadblocks, of course. The prince may fall under the spell of a witch, sidetracking him from his beautiful maiden, or--more likely--the girl will be kidnapped by any variety of ugly, pond-dwelling creature, put into a deep sleep, and woken a hundred years later, looking like a Victoria's Secret ad, by another handsome prince. Her eyes will flicker open, she'll kiss her prince for a modest three or four seconds, the camera will pan out, and they will live happily ever after.

Sound familiar? If not, then clearly you haven't been spending all your waking hours in the company of a five-year-old. I have, and my sense of reality has responded accordingly.

~

Olivia is deep into what her parents call the "Princess Phase." They say it like it's some sort of fungus she picked up from the swimming pool; one day it wasn't there, and then it just was. I've resisted telling them that for some, the princess phase doesn't ever END, per se, as much as it morphs--in my case, into an obsession with unicorns that led to an obsession with fantasy novels that led to a tolerance for high school that hovered somewhere between delusional and blissfully ignorant. I've always loved escaping into mysterious worlds of words and light, sinking into universes where toadstools double as doorways and everyone magically knows the words to every song. With Olivia, however, the obsession is a little more cut-and-dry: she likes her princesses pretty, blonde, and helpless. The deeper their sleep, the better. And I've tried dropping hints: "Look Olivia, see how Belle is so beautiful? It's because she reads all those books. And Ariel? Well, the only reason Prince Eric notices her is because she has spent so much time, you know, getting to know herself and developing hobbies." She's less than impressed. Last night, while watching Thumbelina, I couldn't help but snort when Prince Cornelius follows the sound of Thumbelina's singing... because seriously? The same evening that pea-sized lady learns about the prince of the fairies, he shows up at her window--not even ONE lousy night of pining? Naturally, Olivia's antenna went up.

"What does it mean to 'pine'?"
"Oh, you know," I told her, "It's something people do when they miss someone. Something you're too young to do."
"Like ride a motorbike?"
"Exactly."

She doesn't miss a thing. And I, as the cool nanny, am left with the responsibility of making sure that these princess stories don't completely blow her sense of reality, leaving her with the expectation that all she has to do is take a fat nap and wait for some dude to fly up to her window. Then again, the same movie that makes me feel like a cynical old lady smoking Marlboros in a pile of cats ALSO causes me to well up with pure, magical tears. When Cornelius takes Thumbelina on his bumblebee, flying through the air in a trail of shimmering gold, singing "Let me beeeee your wiiiiinggggssss....." I mean, come on! I'm not made of stone. Re-watching these movies, besides reminding me of my childhood in the most gut-wrenching, melancholy way, has warped my sense of destiny. And as any good student would, I've begun gathering data.

Dictionary.com defines 'destiny' as 'the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events.' The Princess Phase defines it as the moment you wander into a forest clearing and fall asleep in the house of seven tiny men. And me? I think I tread water somewhere between inevitable and irresistible: the first time I wandered into the Co-op, for example, I drifted straight out of my body and into an awareness that yes, something important is happening right now. Inevitable. Deciding to stay in a relationship when I left for college because midway through the semester he and I made pasta in my dorm room, turned to one another, and said "Are we together? Hm. I guess we are." Irresistible. For me, destiny has often been the absence of other options. Not that those options don't exist--but when faced with the decision to turn left or right, it doesn't feel like a decision so much as an invisible hand guiding you through the only doorway. Answering Alicia's nanny advertisement, for example. I was dialing her phone number before my fingers even had a chance to consider what I was going to say when she picked up.

So is there such thing as a 'destiny feeling?' Can you know you'll love someone from a photograph, weeks before you meet them, simply because their eyes make you feel like your head is on fire? Right now I'm on Koh Samui, a beautiful Thai island that is home to the best papaya salad I've ever eaten, a large gold Buddha, and what is surely the largest population of shirtless Russians on the planet. We're here for a yoga training, but more importantly, because Alicia loves it--she lived here years ago, during what she deems the best time of her life. She came to visit and stayed for years; something kept her here, a feeling, a person, something... and when she describes it now, I can see it flicker in her eyes. "I don't know," she told me. "I just felt like I needed to stay." So, stay she did. She met her husband Oliver, they traipsed around Asia, had a kid, and... wha-bam! Here I am, watching Cinderella with that kid. Likewise, Olivia's teacher--a lovely woman from the States--visited Thailand on a whim, forgot her passport on the ferry between Samui and Koh Phangan, started chatting up a gorgeous Israeli man, and.... boom! Five years later, she's still here, about to pop with kid number 2. If she hadn't forgotten her passport, they might not have met. "It was fate," she said. Mind you, she told me this while we were on the same ferry to Koh Phangan... but try as I might to scour the boat for any potential life partners, all I saw were pimply Russian boys in Crocs. Oh well. I listened to the Velvet Underground on my ipod, let Olivia splay across my lap, and decided to wait for fate on the next boat.

It seems to me that destiny always works better in retrospect. When people describe the chain of events that led them to their love, it always sounds ridiculous. Things like, "if I hadn't dropped that French fry, I never would have fallen on my face and broken my nose, and if the freeway hadn't been closed, I never would have gone to the next closest hospital and met my husband while he was walking through the door after forgetting his keys in the emergency room! And if I had had kleenex in my purse, he never would have loaned me his handkerchief!" It always looks glamorous in hindsight; and when you figure that yes, if those terrible things hadn't happened, you wouldn't have met your husband... then the fact that a French fry caused you to break your nose doesn't seem so dismal. But the thing is, if we're really talking about destiny... wouldn't those two people still have found a way to meet? If not that day, on some other ferry to some other island? When I think about my life, it's easy for me to examine the way events have lined up in order to facilitate each step on the pathway. Looking back, I see the seemingly unimportant details, and praise--or bemoan--them for leading me where they have. But regardless of how I feel about them, regardless of where they took me, what could possibly matter except that they did? I'm here, sitting on a barstool in an apartment in Thailand, surrounded by colored pencils and kid's sunblock. This is my destiny, because it's happening. How could fate be anything other than what's occurring right now, beneath my fingers, or in whatever happens to be waiting outside that window?

I know about the destiny feeling. I had it a couple weeks ago, sitting in front of my computer, trying to line up my post-Thailand travels. For weeks, I had been stressing about buying a ticket back to California... prices were going up, and I needed to sort out my Thai visa. Then one day, Olivia and I were watching The Lion King (no princesses, but enough singing animals to redeem it)... and when Mufasa came out of the sky, a big ol' lion of clouds, I lost it. SIMBA, he boomed. This is your DESTINY. There we were, two girls sitting on the couch with eighteen years and a bowl of edamame between us, and I started bawling. "I don't know, Olivia," I told her. "I just have this gut instinct that I'm supposed to stay here." She glanced up at me. "You look funny when you cry," she said, and looked back at the screen.

So there you have it. I'm not going back to California; not yet, anyhow. I'm going back to Bali. There's work for me to do there--I'm going to return to Slukat, which is currently desperate for volunteers. I'm going to dance. I'm going to show my mom all the places that have touched my heart, and give her space to let them touch hers. Yes, I'm still here, months after my initial ticket home... but what can I say? I just have this destiny feeling. When I look back on it later, I'm sure I'll know why.

Sometimes I wonder how many great loves we are allowed in this lifetime. How many different shapes are they allowed to take? In my twenty-two years, I've already known love. I've known destiny, too, and I've found it in a place that I feel I'm just beginning to learn from. When I really think about it, as fun as it is to play the "Of-all-the-gin-joints..." game, there's more to fate than just sitting back and letting it rollick you to the love of your life; fate might place you in the same room as something, but it's up to you to decide where to sit. Or, as a new friend just told me, it's up to you to follow that something onto the subway, exchange phone numbers, and make it happen.

It's scary, laying all your cards out on the table... especially if you've just spent all your time and energy collecting them from the last time someone flicked them all over the place. It feels good to hold them, to run their smoothness underneath your fingertips. Then again, if you do, how will you ever play Go Fish? It's a choice that we have, one that I have. But like most destiny-things, it seems to me that the decision was made long before I ever got my hands on it. A world without Go Fish is not a world I want to live in.

~

Once upon a time, there were two girls. One has curly brown hair and a passion for princesses, and her favorite color is magenta. The other, a little bigger, sits with her arm around the smaller one; she's peeling mangosteen with her fingers and dreaming about the adventure she's getting to live. On the television, an animated Rapunzel sits with her prince in her arms. Just as he is at the brink of death, he slices off her hair and saves them both from the evil witch. "It won't ever grow back," the small girl whines, looking horrified at Rapunzel's pixie-ish bob. The bigger girl, running her hands over her own cropped locks, makes a valiant attempt. "Yeah, but her hair saved the prince--and that's much more important than looking pretty." The small one blinks. You can tell she doesn't buy it. They agree to disagree, curl up into one another, and fall asleep on the couch.

And they lived Happily Ever After.