Important Parts of Last Night

Let me tell you about last night.
Last night was Harry Potter (oh boy, don't tell me you didn't see this one coming).
And it was magnificent.
I mean, there were parts that made me shudder and wonder to myself what the heck were the directors thinking I don't understand why they couldn't stay true to the book here why are they jumping off a cliff good Lord why is Snape clutching a corpse this is bordering on disturbing why didn't they show Percy's big entrance that was one of my favorite parts oh my gosh Ginny please go away you make me sick sometimes.

Or something along those lines.

But I think over all, the movie, just like the book, had the ending that it needed and deserved.
That's really the most important thing, right?


There were other important parts of last night, though.

Like the feeling of complete panic that swept through the theater when the 3D glasses weren't working and everything was blurry. I was literally almost in cardiac arrest when The Man Behind the Curtain finally adjusted the projector correctly and the trailers came into focus.

Like when the Weasley family was mourning Fred and everything was quiet until I began to hear sniffing sounds coming from all around me. The entire theater was crying. The man next to me was crying. The ladywiththemostobnoxiousvoicei'veeverheard behind me was crying (loudly). And I suddenly felt like laughing. Until Harry began his walk towards the Forbidden Forest. Then I stopped laughing and started sniffing myself. I actually fogged up my own 3D glasses and had to wipe them. Not being a glasses-wearer, that was a new experience for me.

Like taking pictures in the lobby of people dressed up as Patronuses and Veela and Freds with bandaged ears and two twin boys with hair sprayed red.

Like when my friend and I had to visit the facilities before the movie. We waited in line for about 10 minutes before we finally got stalls. I was just trying to calculate what my odds of catching an STD from the toilet seat were when I heard my friend yell to me (from across the lavatory): "Holly! We flush ourselves in!" The entire bathroom erupted in echoing, nerdtastic giggles.

Like after the movie, when I decided not to wait for Bea (the GPS) to 'acquire satellite.' I thought I could manage to get home by myself. A sort of deluded Harriet Tubman, I convinced myself that I could find my way North. Apparently, I couldn't. I ended up goodnessknowswhere at 3 in the morning making illegal uturns in quiet neighborhoods and pleading with Bea to help me. She eventually did. Then the problem became keeping myself awake.

Like when I sang every Beatles song I know (which is, forgive me, an awful lot of Beatles songs) at the top of my lungs in order to keep myself awake. I was so tired that my voice was scratchy and pathetic but I made it home okay nonetheless. The dogs were happy to see me.

Yes, it's over. Yes, I'll never see another Harry Potter movie in a theater (unless I go to see this one again, which, let's face it, is highly likely). Yes, before the movie started, I was dreading it starting a little bit. Everyone was. Harry Potter began when we were all young. People have waited for Hogwarts letters, people have waited for the next book, the next movie.

But the waiting is over. It's all here.

I have a Harry Potter book on my lap right now. The Prisoner of Azkaban, because it's my favorite. And I'm thinking about how different it is every time I read these books. How there's always something new. Not because the books have changed, but because I have. And I will.

And as long as there's still that, I don't think anything has ended at all.

No Assembly Required

It's funny to think that almost exactly a year ago, I was lying on the couch at Grandma's, staring at a fake Christmas tree, and blogging about the Minivan Miracle in Marathon, Wisconsin (for the full story, see last year's post).

This Christmas, I'm quite displaced. For one thing, I'm in my own bed. At home. In Minnesota.
Two German Shepherd dogs lie on the kitchen floor. The younger one (who wasn't even alive last Christmas) is sleeping comically on her back with her paws up in the air. The older one sleeps more sedately, and she pricks her ears as I wander past to look at the tree.
Our tree is very real (evidenced by the constant dropping of pine needles, which drives Dad nuts), very tall, and surrounded by presents of various sizes (displaying various levels of wrapping expertise). As I stare at it, bare feet cold against the wood floor, I can't help but think that by this time tomorrow, Christmas will be ending. The magic of the season, which has been present ever since Thanksgiving, will be packed away with the bulbs and nut dishes and empty, sad stockings. The tree will remain for a week or so, but then it too will be cast aside, thrown up and over the deck rail to slowly rot in the snow. In the spring, what's left of the tree will fuel a bonfire down by the lake. By this time tomorrow, all of the presents will be unwrapped. They will be glorious, undoubtedly, but they will lose a little of their glimmer as soon as they are opened.

I've watched quite a few Christmas movies over this past week, and it seems that in every single one, the 'moral' is that Christmas is about more than presents. Christmas is a feeling, a state of mind, and even an action. Christmas, it seems, is good old generosity and kindness all wrapped up in red and green and gold. The 'moral' part of Christmas is truly the part that doesn't dim over time. Generosity doesn't run out of batteries. Kindness can't be cracked or broken. The very best part of Christmas is the lasting part.

So may your caskets remain unblown, may your stockings bulge with promise, and may you enjoy this blessed holiday surrounded by those you love most.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Cinderella

Right now I sort of feel like Cinderella, for the following reasons:
1. There's a ball going on, and I'm not going.
2. Because I have to do work.
3. And I'm sitting here watching the girls on my floor get dressed up.
4. And I wish I were going with them.


I'm unlike Cinderella for the following reasons:
1. I have no adorable rodent friends.
2. It's a not a prince's ball in the palace; it's a Yule Ball (that's right-Harry Potter style) in the Student Center.
3. There are no hideous step-relatives preventing me from going.
4. My 'work' consists of papers, and presentations, and general studying, not chores and laundry.

You know, Cinderella used to be my favorite story growing up. According to my parents, I used to beg them to read it to me. Unfortunately for them, it was quite a long read, for a picture book.

Nowadays, I'm not such a fan of old Cinderella. We still own the Disney version on VHS, and whenever I watch it I'm struck by what a weak character Cinderella is.

First of all, she's not very proactive. Instead of fighting to improve her own life, she relies on mice, and a dog, and a horse, and a fairy godmother to help her win her prince. She's constantly singing about the importance of dreams, but does she ever really take any risks to make her dreams come true? Nope. She goes to a ball and dances one dance with an incredibly shallow prince, who doesn't speak two words to her, and probably only likes her for her beauty.

Furthermore, what were her dreams in the first place? To fall in love? I mean, this girl has pretty much been locked up in a manor scrubbing floors her entire life. Doesn't she want to see a bit of the world? Get an education? Make some friends? Actually live a normal life for a bit? Apparently not.

To be completely fair to Cinderella, however, I decided to google her. See if she's really just all fluff. Here's what I found out:

The story of Cinderella is actually thought to have originated around the 1st Century B.C., when a Greek history named Strabo recorded this story about an Egyptian girl:
They tell the fabulous story that, when she was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from her maid and carried it to Memphis. While the king was administering justice in the open air, the eagle, when it arrived above his head, flung the sandal into his lap. The king, having been stirred both by the beautiful shape of the sandal and by the strangeness of the occurrence, sent men in all directions into the country in quest of the woman who wore the sandal. When she was found in the city of Naucratis, she was brought up to Memphis and became the wife of the king...[3][4]

Nothing else I found led me to believe Cinderella has any depth, although I do admire her longevity. I guess everyone likes a little blind romance.

And she does have some good qualities, I'll admit. What do they call her? "Ever gentle and kind." Certainly admirable, but not exactly my kind of heroine these days.

Third Is The One In The Polka Dotted Dress

Things are looking up already, folks. I got third place in the firstlinefiction short story contest.
I won't lie; I was hoping for first. But you know what? The first place story is excellent. Really, really excellent. The second place story is very good as well. Both are better than mine, and both deserved first and second place.
You know what else? The August contest starts today. I'm shooting for first place again.

Here's the bronze story in case you want to read through it:

The Waiters

He brought in his shirt pocket the last photograph he’d taken of his son.

Poor guy. You should have seen the way he walked into the office that afternoon. He wore a yellow jacket that seemed inappropriate. Its brightness contrasted with the hollow expression on his face so drastically that it was almost shocking. I was relieved when he took the jacket off, carefully hanging it up on the rack in the corner of the waiting room.

And then the man began to slowly cross, crumpling a little with each step. I imagined that he’d be on his knees before he even reached the chair. I imagined myself putting my hand on the shrugged shoulder, shouting into a wrinkled ear. He made it though, sitting next to me as I knew he would. There was no other place, after all. The waiting room was full of people waiting, most of whom were buried in magazines or clicking on small phones.

He began talking as soon as he sat down. Talking to me, or so I figured after a few seconds.

I had a son once, he said.

A son? This was before I decided he was speaking to me and not to someone else.

Yes. He died, though. Car accident.

I’m sorry. Because that’s what you say, isn’t it? I’m sorry? I’m sorry I can’t know what you’re going through, and I’m sorry that I’m going to try my hardest to comfort you anyway. I’m sorry I don’t understand.

Thank you, he said simply. I thought that would be it, and I could go back to staring at the wall.

He continued, though. So many people die that way; it isn’t terribly original. But my son doesn’t die that way. My son doesn’t die.

He did, though. I spoke softly, hoping he would know that I wasn’t trying to hurt him with my bluntness. I wanted him to keep talking all of the sudden. I wanted to know how this man had come to be folded into himself. How his eyes got to be the way they were now. Drowning. He could see, but he wasn’t really looking out of them. I saw all of these things in that waiting room, and I wanted him to keep talking.

The man paused for a moment, fiddling with the pocket at the front of his shirt. Out of the pocket he plucked a folded bit of paper. A photograph; it said Kodak across the back. He unfolded the photograph and stared at it for a few seconds before folding it once more.

He took a deep breath before he spoke again. Afterwards, we all mourned. No one talked during meals anymore. My wife and I cried ourselves to sleep every night. We tried to comfort one another. I tried so hard. But it is so very difficult to dig yourself out of the well of your own grief and reach for someone else.

Suddenly the man looked up at me, as if just realizing that he was talking to an actual person who was listening.

He looked down again at the photo in his hands and continued. My wife stopped grieving after awhile. She got on with her life. She went back to work. She started running with the dog in the morning. She drove our daughters to lacrosse and modern jazz. She didn’t understand why I couldn’t get up too. She used to become angry with me. Why can’t you get over him? She would yell. Why can’t you see that he’s gone and that we’re left? You have two other children. You have a job. This needs to stop. The man looked at me again, warily this time. Do you have a job?

I nodded. I deliver packages. I drive a truck and I stop and I make people sign for brown boxes or tan envelopes.

The man took this in. Do you enjoy your work? He asked me.

I thought for a moment. Then I answered. I enjoy the people. I watch them. I guess what they’re like, what their names are.

Do you ever get them right?

I don’t know if I do or not.

The man frowned. I would like to know. He unfolded the photograph again and stared at it again. I would like to know.
I saw that he was on the verge of crying. His eyes squinted up and his knees shook a bit. People across the room were beginning to look at us. Not obviously looking, but peering at us every so often over their Newsweeks, as if to warn us that they didn’t want to overhear, but that they would if we spoke any louder. They didn’t want to overhear. They didn’t want a share in the anguish on the man’s face, the bewilderment on mine. They read their magazines.

The man shuddered three more times and was still.

He began to speak again after a few minutes. I realized soon that I could lose my wife as well. That she wouldn’t die, but that she would be just as permanently and irrevocably gone if I didn’t stop missing my son. So I stopped. I had to, you see. I knew if I lost anything else I would disappear completely myself. Everything tying me down would be gone. I would be gone too.

I stretched my legs out across the carpet and arched my back a little bit. I wasn’t bored; I was only sore from sitting so long. He knew I wasn’t bored. Even if I had been, I don’t think he would have stopped. We both knew now that he needed to say these things. We both knew I needed to hear.

He kept talking through my stretch; his gaze wandered down to my brown boots and anchored on to them.

I donated all of my son’s clothes, and cleaned his room. I even took down his posters and painted over his walls with the spring green color my wife picked. The paint erased my son’s smell until I couldn’t breathe in that room anymore. I was about to shut his door behind me for the last time when I spotted the edge of something white sticking out from under the bed.

It was the photograph, wasn’t it?

The man nodded gravely. I had taken it a few weeks before he died. We were driving in my old convertible going west. West like the pioneers, my son had shouted joyfully. While we were stopped at a red light, my son dug the camera out of his backpack and thrust it at me. We were laughing hard, like two teenagers instead of one. My son rested one arm on top of the rolled-down window and leaned back away from me. He grinned the same smile I had seen all his life. My son leaned back into the wind against the highway and grinned while I took the picture.

It was all too much for the man then. He dropped his head into the picture in his hands and sobbed soundlessly. His back rose and fell with each rolling breath, and as I deliberated patting him gingerly on the shoulderblade, I intercepted a few raised eyebrows from across the room. I shot those eyebrows straight back, sending most of the waiters diving back into their Popular Sciences. I wasn’t a big man. I wasn’t even a brave man. Not then. But I knew when things were private. This was between the man, the photograph of his son, and me.

When the man finally calmed down he looked relieved. Now he could finish.

Very slowly he opened the photograph in his hands. I couldn’t quite see it, but I didn’t fail to be amazed at its proximity. I only had to raise my eyes. I didn’t, though. I waited.

He spoke. The last photograph of my son, the one I clung to when my wife wasn’t around, the one that allowed me to keep him and to keep myself together…He trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to end, now that he had begun to end.

He tried again. The last photograph of my son is something I both love and hate. I can’t make myself throw it away, and yet it feels heavy in my pocket. He stopped.

A woman had walked into the waiting room, and was now looking around with a definite air of impatient authority. She called out a name. I didn’t hear, but I guess the man did because he slowly stood and walked towards her with that same worn down gait he had entered on.

I sat back in my chair and looked around the room. The other waiters stared boldly at me now. I dropped my head, all defiance gone. I sat and I thought. I knew this was a story I would remember, not just another observation to drop in my brain like a marble. I wondered if I would ever retell it. I wondered how I would do it. But mostly I wondered how it ended.


How did I know about the photograph in the man’s pocket? Because he told me about it while we waited.

On his way out, the he passed me with only a nod. Thank you, he said quietly, slipping either arm into that inappropriate yellow jacket. I stared, decided.

Yes I must. Sir! I bounded after him past the alarmed waiters. Sir can I please see the photograph of your son?

He looked at me in his watery way, and then seemed to surface. I imagined the last waves breaking around his eyes before receding like the tide. Yes, he replied. Yes of course you can see my son.

Slowly he reached towards his pocket and drew out the creased picture. He handed it to me without unfolding it. Perhaps he thought that by unfolding it himself it would only make it harder. Perhaps he needed me to take it from him, to hold his regret and his pain for a little while.

I unfolded the picture and stared at it for what felt like a long time. I wanted him to feel me take it in. But really it only took me a moment to understand.

As I handed the picture back to him and watched him refold it and set it gently into the same pocket, I listened to him speak the last words he ever said to me. I had a son once, he explained patiently, as if we were starting over, as if we were just meeting each other. I had a son once and he died. I had a son once, and the last photograph I ever took of him captured only his elbow.


I stood and saw the glass door swing shut behind him, watched it forget instantly that such a man had ever passed through.

You know, with people you meet when you’re delivering packages, you can guess. You can assume that a woman is snobbish, or that a man is out of sorts and late for work. You can guess about them, and it never has to bother you if you’re right or if you’re wrong. You can just let your imaginings hang in the air above your head.

Sons and photographs, I have come to realize, are a different matter altogether. With them, you have to wonder your whole life why you didn’t look through the lens before snapping the shutter. You have to wish that you had taken the time to aim, wish that you hadn’t been too captivated by the living, breathing boy to focus on capturing all of him forever.

Eventually, though, you have to know that when you tell the story of your son in a waiting room, when people listen, and when people look at the photograph of your son afterwards, that those waiters see all of him. You have to know that those waiters see all of you too.

Talking About My Generation

I am currently feeling very proud of my generation, and for something that we as a group cannot necessarily take credit for. You know how the 60's had hippies and peace and the Beatles? And the 20's had jazz and F. Scott?

Well you know what the 90's had/has? Harry Potter. That's right everyone; you can keep your disco and your painted chapels and your Rin Tin Tin. We'll keep our magical world.

I suppose that J.K. is the one who really deserves the credit, although the movies never would have been made (and perhaps so many books wouldn't have been written), had the entire concept not been received so enthusiastically by us 90's children. People of other ages liked the books as well, but we were the ones who celebrated being the same age as Harry himself as we read, who trick-or-treated in robes and taped glasses, and who saw Harry first and foremost as a friend we knew as well as the kids across the street.

The final movies will be out within the next year or so. It makes me sad to think about the saga ending. Although I tend to think of the movies and the books as separate entities, it feels to me that with the release of Deathly Hallows Part 2, the magic will fly up and disappear in a thousand sparks. Harry will exist after that only on our book cases and in our DVD players. He will no longer grow and expand; he will simply remain as he is.

Someday, though, when our children reach that awkward, mystical age of eleven, we will sit by their bedsides, ignore their protests of, "oh but I'm too old to be read to!" and begin to tell them of the boy in the cupboard under the stairs. We won't stop until Harry matters to them as well.