Tag Archives: Harry Potter

An Unexpected Gift

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Several weeks ago I received an invitation to a child’s birthday party. When I first received the invitation, I wasn’t sure I was going to attend because I suspected I would be the only one wearing a mask. The party would be indoors and crowded.
Even though I am vaccinated and boosted, I am still cautious about covid. Omicron may be predominantly mild in those vaccinated and boosted; however, of the people I know who have tested positive, quite a few speak of the fatigue they felt for weeks afterwards.
I know what it’s like to feel fatigued for weeks (years, actually) thanks to narcolepsy. The medicine I’m currently taking is kinda/sorta working, so I don’t want to chance a step backwards with covid.
As the party day approached, I decided to go and wear a mask. Case counts had been declining and I knew it would mean a lot to the birthday kid for me to attend. But now I had another concern — what to get the birthday kid as a present.
I much prefer giving experiences than things. So when I saw the Hartford Symphony had Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in Concert on their schedule for April 23 & 24, I knew this would be my gift. Not only does the birthday kid love Harry Potter (like I do!), but they also play violin.
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The plan was to pick up birthday kid at 11:00am for a 1:00pm show. I thought that would give us enough time to stop and get lunch somewhere and drive the 55 minutes to Hartford.
Around 10am, anxiety reared its ugly head. I had never been to the Bushnell Performing Arts Center. Of everything in this world that can give me anxiety, parking in unknown places is very high on the list. Especially the idea of running late and having to find a parking spot. Living in the Chicago suburbs for 8 years and driving downtown for shows will do that to you. I checked my map app and sure enough, traffic already increased the drive time by 10 minutes.
My brain whirred with mental math — if it now takes 65 minutes to drive there and we stop and eat for half an hour that only gives us 25 minutes to find a parking spot and arrive in time for the show.
ONLY 25 MINUTES FOR AN ANXIOUS PARKER IS NOT ENOUGH TIME.
I’m now texting the parent that traffic is increasing drive time. I’m going to leave now. I get in the car and go!
Except as I turn off my street onto the next crossroad, I imagine traffic getting even worse. What if traffic is so bad we don’t have time to stop for lunch?
I turn around and drive back to the apartment to get snacks.  I text the parent so birthday kid brings snacks for herself  just in case! 
 
I have now lost all the extra time I had by leaving a little bit early. I also still have to get gas.
When birthday kid and I are finally on the road, the drive time is now back to the original 55 minutes and I’m feeling much calmer because I know we have snacks.
We arrive at the Bushnell a little after noon. All my parking anxiety is quickly assuaged because the free lot that I knew about from the Hartford Symphony website is diagonal from the venue and it’s not even a third of the way full. It’s quite literally an anxious parker’s dream come true.
I’m further thrilled to learn there’s a small café inside the Bushnell. I order birthday kid the sandwich they want and I forgo the café options for my snacks because I know I’ll enjoy it more than the lunch offerings. We sit outside and people watch as all manner of Harry Potter fans stream into the area. Some are wearing wizard’s robes. All four Hogwarts houses are represented.
Thanks to the pandemic, it’s been years since I’ve done anything like this outing. I thought I would enjoy the movie and delight in the novelty of hearing the orchestra play. Both of those did, in fact, happen!
But what I enjoyed the most, the thing that ignited my soul from pandemic darkness where I hadn’t even realized just how dark it was in there because I’ve adapted to it after these two long years, was the shared experience of laughter, cheers, boos, and tears.
Over one thousand people sat in the theater with us. All wore masks. But that didn’t prevent us from cheering at Harry’s triumphs, laughing at Ron’s infatuation with the Beaubaxtons students, or gasping at the return of Voldemort.
The tears for me came when Alan Rickman’s name scrolled across the screen during the closing credits. Other people around me also expressed grief at the loss of such an iconic actor.
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I had no idea I was missing this kind of shared experienced until I was in the thick of it. It makes me wonder what else the pandemic has taken from me that I don’t even realize.

Memoir Monday, October 10th 2016

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Anyone who knows me, knows that I love all things Harry Potter.  One of my favorite quotes from the book series comes from The Chamber of Secrets when Albus Dumbledore tells Harry, “…help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”  I love the idea that all you have to do is ask and you shall receive.  Simple, right?  And certainly not restricted to just Hogwarts (e.g., Matthew 7:7 — Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you)

Where I struggle is knowing when to ask for help.

For many years I felt asking for help indicated weakness, that I was not strong enough or smart enough or confident enough or whatever enough to do the task at hand.

I remember one time sitting in my office at my former university struggling with calculating an analysis of variance hypothesis test by hand in preparation for class.  I just could not understand where I was making my mistake and as a professor, I thought it utterly absurd that I couldn’t figure it out.  I probably wasted a good hour and when I finally did ask a colleague to look at the numbers it turned out the formula in the book had a typo and it was missing a summation sign.  Duh.

Such a simple solution, you’d think I would have learned something valuable from that incident.  On the spectrum of enlightenment, I was still pretty dim at the point so no, I really didn’t.

I shouldn’t be surprised, then, that I have had this problem recur in my life. 

Most recently this happened last Friday when my husband and I decided to hike Haystack Mountain.  Everyone in town has recommended this hike and with beautiful fall foliage and glorious sunshine we drove up the mountain to the trail and began our ascent.  It wasn’t too taxing, though there was one steep section.

At the top a stone observation tower treated us to panorama views of the quaint New England town we’ve been living in for almost 6 weeks.  After getting our fill of the view, we started the hike down the mountain.

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We reached a point where we could turn left or right.  We opted to go right.  We kept going and came out at a road we were unfamiliar with and we couldn’t even GPS our location because my phone has been broken for the last four weeks and my husband’s was charging in the car.

My husband suggested we go left, so we did.  Then we took another left and ended up on a street named Roughland Road (oh, the irony!).

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At this point we had been hiking well over an hour since our descent and sometime later we ended up on a road which took us to the main road going into town.

We knew this location because it’s where the vet’s office is for the dogs we are taking care of in town.  My husband did graciously offer for me to stay behind there while he finished the walk, but to paraphrase Kate Winslet’s character from Titanic, I told him, “You walk, I walk.”   Except we weren’t very close to the mountain – about two miles away and then we would have to climb back up the mountain to where we parked the car.

So we continued on, and every empty bottle we encountered on the side of the road seemed to taunt me (that’s right, we didn’t have water either).  After 10 minutes or so I would take off my sweater because I would get too hot then a few minutes later I would have to put it back on because I got too cold.

Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, our circumstances were not dire.  But I was tired, having worked at the café that day, and I had been utterly unprepared for such a walk.  For some reason, though, I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for help.  I didn’t ask my husband, I didn’t ask God, I didn’t try to wave down anyone in their car.  I just kept going.

Then all of a sudden, a minivan veered off the side of the ride and headed right towards us.  I thought we were going to get hit, but it went around us and out jumped a young man.  The minivan was a taxi.  Oh my gosh, we’re saved!  I thought.  And then the taxi pulled away as my husband and I tried to chase him down to give us a ride.  But he kept on going and the young man explained he was a medical taxi and could only be paid through insurance.

Disappointing, yes, but it was just what I needed to let me know that I did, in fact, want help.  I didn’t know who could save us or how, but I wanted help.  I kept hoping someone we knew would drive by and sure enough less than five minutes later a regular from the café saw us on the side of the road and pulled over.  I had never been so happy to get in a car.

Our rescuer drove us to our car and as we made our way there, my husband and I realized we would have been walking for another two to two-and-a-half hours if we had not gotten a ride.  So thank you, Jon, for your awesome timing and kindness.

My only regret about the situation (other than fantasizing about pushing my husband out into the road as we were walking, which I later apologized for thinking about), was waiting for so long to ask for help. 

Hopefully, I have finally learned my lesson. 

Because honestly, if something is advised by Jesus and Albus Dumbledore, then shouldn’t that be good enough for me?

Whatever Wednesday — Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

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Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. You might say I have a bit of a Harry Potter obsession.  I once had a man withdraw a marriage proposal after I told him that if I could only talk about one topic for the rest of my life it would be Harry Potter.  Think about it – from just one book series you can discuss magic, spirituality, religion, racism, war, peace, and unicorns (among other things)!  I don’t think the man was serious about the marriage proposal in the first place, but I was certainly serious about Harry Potter.

That’s why when I was on a date with someone else a few months later and he told me that he and a friend had planned an all-day movie marathon of the Harry Potter movies for Valentine’s Day weekend, I began to suspect that this was the man for me.  That we then spent our honeymoon having this all-day movie marathon just goes to show how serious I am about Harry Potter.

              So of course I dove right into this latest installment.  And don’t worry, I’m not going to give any spoilers away until the second to last paragraph, other than I gasped so loudly on pages 17 and 20 that my husband had to leave the room because he was going to read the book second and didn’t want to know anything about it.

Now that I’m done, I don’t know how I feel about the book.  For the record, it’s also not really a book.  It’s a play script that wasn’t actually written by JK Rowling, although it is based on an original story by her, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany.  Part of me loves hearing any tidbits about Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the Hogwarts gang, and how their futures mapped out, but other parts of me are left feeling empty by the “book.”  I don’t know if I feel let down; perhaps the script format just didn’t work me.

Or maybe I just don’t like Harry as an adult.  There are some interesting choices that the writers make with Harry’s story.  But as Harry is not my creation, I cannot presume to know this character better than JK Rowling.  So I don’t think it’s my place to question her characterizations, although it does give me good fodder to reflect on character development and story choice in my own writing and I suppose I can be grateful about that.

**SPOILER ALERT PARAGRAPH**  I think ultimately, though, I felt the same way about Cursed Child as I did when Back to the Future II came out in theaters.  Like Cursed Child, I had been waiting for that movie for a long time (OMG, I had a super big crush on Michal J. Fox!) and I wanted it to make me love him even more.  So when the plot went everywhere and seemed to negate the very best moments of the original film, I had a hard time enjoying it.  There are some similarities with time travel in Cursed Child.  I began to worry about how everything would get wrapped up and I whether would I be able to believe in the story.   **SPOILER ALERT PARAGRAPH**

**SPOILERS OVER YOU CAN KEEP READING HERE** I suppose the fact I had such a strong reaction to the script indicates just how much the original Harry Potter stories resonate with me.  Regardless of my take home feelings, I did read the script in one day, and even though JK Rowling insists Harry’s story is now done I am confident that should she release another story I would read it with the same gusto as this one.  I think Harry Potter may be my first true love.  I’m pretty sure my husband is okay with that!