Robin and I are conspiring to share our magic with one another. In recent weeks, I’ve sent her a witches costume, a magic wand with flashing LED lights, a magic kid, and a wizard’s hat and robe.

She claims she turned her dog Sandy into a frog, and then back again. She says she may do the same thing to me.

I see the gleam in her eye when we talk magic, she is into it, and so am I, and we are on a mystical trip together. I am definitely enabling this magical turn, she has the magician in her and I mean to feed it the best magic food.

Emma is going along with this, but keeping a careful watch.

Today, the first of two magic kits arrived in Brooklyn, this one is a bit too old for Robin, but she loved it, opening it with Emma’s help and trying out a few simple tricks.

She Facetimed me (this is a noun now)  to wave her wand at me and share a new card trick. I dislike Facetime until we started sharing magic there, I like it better now, and am used to it. I get calls from Robin most evenings.

She’s got the bug, I can feel it. She was wearing her cape and wizard’s hat when the call came in.

Monday, a second magic kid arrives for four- year olds and up. Watch out.

She already waved her magic wand at me through the cellphone and turned me into a duck. I quacked, loudly and with flair, and she was quite pleased with herself.

Next, she said, she will turn me into a goose if I didn’t behave. I will, I will. This is pretty cool.

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I’m proud of my daughter Emma, she is the Baseball Editor on the booming new sports website The Athletic. She directed and edited a huge story that broke last week about how the World Champion Houston Astros stole pitching signs electronically in 2017, part of a broader issue for Major League Baseball.

It’s a huge scandal, and good for you, excellent editor and daughter. Emma is one of the highest ranking and most influential women in the sports media world. She’s come a long way from reading Tolkien in her bedroom for days on end.

But back to the magic, I see that Robin and I share many odd and distinctive genes, they seem to find one another. I’m liking this. I told her I would get hold of my own magic and turn her into a bag of popcorn.

Her eyes widened a bit, I heard Emma tell her I was only kidding. If I start quacking or honking, you know where to look.

I brought it on myself.