It was the summer of 1999. Our family reunion in the beautiful mountains of Estes Park, Colorado, was coming to an end...and I had run out of reading material for the flight home.
Oh, sure, I could pick something up at the airport, but I knew my selection would probably be limited to heterosexual romances and high-tech thrillers. Neither were exactly my cup of tea.
Then my teenage nephew put a book into my hand and said, "Here, Aunt Debra, you can borrow this for the flight home."
"Thanks," I said casually, not suspecting my life was about to change forever. "I'll mail it back to you when I'm finished with it."
The title of the book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I'd heard of the Harry Potter books, of course, and had even been mildly curious, but when I went to the library, all of their copies were checked out with waiting periods of up to a year. At last I'd get to find out what all the fuss was about. And even if it didn't live up to expectations, at least it had saved me from the bodice-ripping bimbos.
I cut my travel time to the airport a little close--you could still do that and get away with it in pre 9/11 days, so I didn't actually get to open the book until the plane took off. I flipped to the first page and read, "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
She Had Me at Hello
I was enchanted. Harry's story kept me on the edge of my seat through the remainder of the flight. When the plane landed, I didn't rush home to greet my cats. Instead, I charged to the nearest bookstore and found the second and third books in the series. The fourth book was released the next year, and I tore through that as well.
By the time the fifth, sixth, and seventh books were released, I was going to midnight parties at the local Border's. I stood patiently in line for hours, just so I could rush home with the newest treasure. Without fail, I read these books in a single weekend, sometimes laughing out loud, sometimes sobbing into the nearest available cat.
The End
Last Friday morning, at 12:01 AM, I attended the premiere of the final movie of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.
It's all over now. Oh, I will keep these books all my life, and I will often go back and revisit the memories, but it will be like reading an old diary. The old stories are still fun, but there are no new memories for the making. I feel oddly bereft, like a door has swung shut behind me, closing off an era of my life.
Perhaps I wouldn't feel this so strongly were it not true. The next month or two will involve major changes in my career and in my life as I become what I never dared hope I could be--a fulltime freelance writer. I hope I will be able to deal with the challenges with Harry's courage, Dumbledore's wit and style, Hermione's intelligence, and Fred and George's wacky sense of humor.
And on the one in two hundred gazillion chance that J.K. Rowling would ever read this blog, I'd just like to say to her, Thank you. Your work not only touched my life, but actually enriched it as well. That's something any writer can be proud of.
Sincerely, I think the discernment that I unequivocally "discarded" my a few university degrees and "quit working" to play around on the Internet all day.
Posted by: baccarat | Jul 26, 2011 at 05:38 PM