Last week, I found myself regressing into Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
I’m not going to pretend like this was some parenting adventure. I read zero words of this saga to Beckett. And, please, when I do, it will be a calculated experience with such high expectations that there will be no way his reaction could possibly meet them.
No, I reread it for me. I returned to Hogwarts for another year, because that’s just what I needed to do. Harry, Hermione, Ron...bring it on home, friends.
With the election drawing near and our current reign of terror cultivating more harm and fear; with schools reopening and our babies befriending classmates through plexiglass...I retreated to Hogwarts.
My reading experience last week was so different from my first Harry Potter experience, the one at age eleven when I did actually read under the covers by flashlight after bedtime. My initial Harry Potter experience showed me comradery, love, and courage. It modeled honoring diversity and how to be a defender of good in the world.
I realized this time, through her preeminent series, J.K. Rowling laid a foundation for a world I had no idea would parallel our current reality. She primed a generation of hearts and minds for the day we would need to find our own roles in Dumbledore’s Army.
This realization made me wonder: What am I doing to fight the good fight as an adult? What kind of good am I wielding? What is my metaphorical wand?
Last week, Harry Potter reminded me that we read fiction, and read our children fiction, to prepare for a future we cannot predict. Philip Pullman said it best at a speech at the University of East Anglia: “I think we should act as if. I think we should read books, and tell children stories, and take them to the theatre, and learn poems, and play music, as if it would make a difference [...] We should act as if the universe were listening to us and responding; we should act as if life were going to win.”
So I’m back now from Hogwarts, trying to figure out how I’m going to bring a little Hermione into the world.
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