Crumbs In My Cleavage

By about a quarter of the way through the last movie installment in the Harry Potter series, I was very glad I had opted to see it weeks after it hit the big screen – sitting next to my husband in a theater scattered with about ten other patrons, all strangers and all middle-aged. I had originally planned to see it with three of my girlfriends at midnight on its opening date as I had seen each of the four previous Harry Potter films. But, every year, with the kids and schedules, it has gotten harder to do those midnight screenings. Plus, Jeremiah really wanted to see it with me, and… I kind of knew it would be messy for me.

Almost as soon as the show began, I was crying at about the level I think most normal people shed tears at the end of a very touching film. Within one hour, I was sloppy, and by about 30 minutes from the end of the movie, I am sure I was worrying some of our fellow movie-goers with my sobbing. I think they must have thought something was very wrong – that I was in mourning for a close friend who had died and who happened to be one of the cast members or that my husband had chosen the middle of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 to tell me that he wanted a divorce. But, no. It was, is, more complex than that.

This summer, I have been reading the first book to Jacob, my almost-eight-year-old. We plan to read one book a year until he’s old enough to handle the darker parts, and then I’ll probably let him read what’s left of the seven-book series over a single weekend, as he is bound to want to do (at least I hope so). We’re about halfway through the first book, and Jacob is lukewarm. He thinks it’s neat and all, he’s just not bonkers about it. What weirds him out and what has taken me completely off guard is how often I burst into tears as I’m reading the book to him. I’m not a big re-reader of books, and even though I kept planning to read all of the books before each of the movies, I never actually ended up doing it. So, I am experiencing the whole story from the beginning for the first time since I picked The Sorcerer’s Stone off an end-cap at Hastings in Searcy, Arkansas in 1999 thinking to myself, “Huh. This looks interesting.”

As I read it again, I find myself getting choked up without any warning at unexpected parts. Remembering what a borderline abusive life Harry had living with the Dursleys. Reading about the first time Harry met the Weasley family. Hagrid. The parts where Ron and Harry realize that Hermione, who seemed so annoying to them, is brilliant and earnest. And, the latest part that has me so emotional: when the sorting hat took so long to decide which house Neville belonged in. I couldn’t have known how Neville would turn out when I first read the book. I couldn’t know that the sorting hat must have been wondering if Neville belonged in hard-working, loyal, and maybe a little dull Hufflepuff or if he belonged in brave, noble, and daring Gryffindor. Little Neville, who kept losing his toad. We all know now what we didn’t know then, but what the sorting hat DID know: that Neville most definitely belonged in Gryffindor.

When I was boo-hooing tonight as that revelation kept washing over me, as scenes of that final battle at Hogwarts kept flashing in my head, and as I thought about what was in store for the little kids in this first book whom we all “watched” grow up in our heads, Jacob said to me,

“Mom, you’re crying like these people are real. Like they’re your friends or something.”

Oh, dear. I feel so silly to admit it: they are! Not since Little Women and The Phantom of the Opera have characters in a book felt so real to me and so dear to my heart. As I sniffled my way through the final movie of the series, I was not only feeling what was happening on the screen, I was knowing the characters – remembering what they had given up – realizing where they were ending up. They may as well have been real! Real people I once knew whose story I carry around in my head with me for always. Isn’t that what it’s like with real people’s stories? You think back on what was, knowing what will be, wondering what comes next… it’s emotional. It’s the magic of any very good story.

I know not everyone responds to the Harry Potter series like I have, but I know I am not alone. I’m looking forward to finding out if Jacob, my own little Harry Potter, will feel it like I do. I think he will – and we will have camaraderie in it. (And, if he doesn’t, I’ll just move on to Jackson. Ha ha!)

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Today was slated to be a Thursday, but it didn’t act like a Thursday.

See, at the beginning of the school year, my friend and I decided to share home school and childcare responsibilities. She was to have my seven-year-old son on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that still left me alone with at least one young kid (my two-year-old son) for over 50 hours per week and at most three young boys (mine two and my friend’s) for over 30 hours per week. So, my husband and I decided to put our two-year-old in “preschool”. My youngest son would be lovingly cared for by not me from 9:30 am until 1:30 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I imagined leisurely strolls through art museums, long, amusing lunches with friends, and trips to Sally Beauty to browse new fingernail polish colors. What I’ve mostly gotten are quick Taco Bell lunches between doctor appointments and long grocery trips. I still love the time, because I am eating a burrito alone, and I am pushing the grocery cart alone. But, there is far too little time in which I have spent those mornings talking with adult friends or lounging in a park. Today, I was to do both!

Only my friend stood me up. < "wah wah" > Oh, don’t worry about my friend feeling “called out” in my blog. This friend doesn’t read my blog. < sucka punch! > But, it was still great, because I had committed to sitting in a new park with nothing but a gas station ham and cheese sandwich (Don’t you judge me! It’s good memories from childhood!) some little oranges, and my phone. I got some sun and some shade, took in some bird noises, and chatted with a couple of friends on my phone. It turned out to be really nice!

Next, I picked up my little one and headed home where he immediately went down for a nap. Then – here comes the good part – I puttered. I puttered around the house. I sent some e-mails, did a few dishes, ate a cookie – all with “Criminal Minds” playing in the background. Two hours later the little tyke was still asleep, so I turned my attention to dinner. Skip to dinner. We had a duo of grilled steaks (Thank you for the terminology, “Top Chef”!): Ahi tuna and T-bone with sides of stir fried broccoli and green onions in peanut sauce and Parmesan risotto-like rice stuff (true chef speak eludes me). We ate it outside on our patio in our swim suits. As the kids were gearing up for the pool – it’s a little 12-foot by 3-foot above-ground one – Jeremiah decided to give me my birthday present a little early…


The book BOSSYPANTS!

And, oh yeah, it was on A KINDLE!

So, after a little swim, Jeremiah took the boys and the dishes inside, and I sat out to drip dry and read on my new toy.

Oh, wow. The Kindle is great and all (it IS!), but if you have not heard of this book or know anything about it – well, then I am honored to introduce it to you. It’s Tina Fey’s somewhat biographical book, and it is… it is… the thesaurus cannot give me a special enough word to describe this book’s level of funny. I sat outside reading in the dusk light and laughing so hard that it went flat beyond crying and straight into nausea. Even so, I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed so hard and so loudly that the neighbor’s dog got very angry. The dog got so angry that it phantom-chased me into my house. I was afraid it would break through the fence and kill me – or worse: destroy my new Kindle.

I have now come into the house to three boys, one large, one medium, and one very small, pressed into our big recliner watching the original Superman movie. And, I get to share it with you, my very special readership of, well, tens of people!

This, brothers and sisters, is the how to end a very nearly perfect day.

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Having two sick boys on a day off from home school has its advantages: concurrent naps. And, since it is 69.1 degrees here in my shade-mottled backyard, I am taking advantage of that time to its fullest. This means that today I have read! Ten whole pages! (Notice how I cannot read more than ten pages without telling you about it. Hmmmm.)  Today, I am reading (and I use the term “reading” loosely – you all know by now I only read about five books a year and all of them in bits and pieces sprinkled in with each other) Solar, by Ian McEwan.
 

You sciencey types might love this book.  The line from the book I am, right now, so jazzed about is told from the perspective of the main character, a physicist, to whom the ways of academic science are old hat.  He says he has witnessed, “the gossip, the politics of science, the positioning, the special pleading…”  Ooooo, I love Ian McEwan.  “The special pleading…”  I was once so embroiled in it myself, and my sweet husband is now experiencing it in all its ugly glory.  Reading this book is helping to give me a measure of grace toward Jeremiah and all of you who work in “the field” that I might otherwise easily lose my grasp upon.  Thank you, Sir Ian McEwan.  (He’s a “Sir”, right?)
 
I promise, a post about cooking is coming.
 

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