Quite Simply, I Fell in Love

On top, the VHS I got when I was 9.
All the way to the right, the Sorcerer's Stone book
that I destroyed in my love. 

The sight of the move trailer on the television sparked my interest. Wide-eyed, I told my mom later that movie, and, of course, she repeated her mantra: “You have to read the book, first.” It was okay, though, because she had a copy of it in the classroom she worked in at the local school.

that I wanted to see

She handed me the copy, and I ran my fingers over the strange, golden letters of the title. I looked at the cover that showed a boy flying: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was eight years old, and by the time I was done reading it, the book cover was so destroyed with the pleasure of reading that my mom told me I could keep it and she’d buy another one for the classroom.

There are many stories in my life connected with the Harry Potter series. At my ninth birthday party, for example, as I blew out the candles I wished for the Sorcerer’s Stone VHS. Guess what was in the first present I opened from my grandparents? When I was ten, I received a magazine with the new film’s details on the inside spread. Those pages were so destroyed that I ended up tearing them from the magazine, and I still have them in a binder. I remember waiting in line for Prisoner of Azkaban that stretched across the parking lot, and some man stepped out of line at the front and shouted, “DUDE HARRY POTTER IS SOLD OUT!” Or receiving my copy of Half Blood Prince at a midnight party after taking an eerie, nighttime walk, and on the way home I took my book light out to read in the car. (“Don’t stay up all night reading!” Mom told me.)

I am so grateful for this series, and I wouldn’t know where I would be without it. It might not have begun my journey into reading and writing, but it definitely enhanced it. Not only that, but it also enhanced my life. I read the first book when I was eight years old and saw the final movie at age eighteen. Ten Years.

Pretty much.

In high school, that’s what drew us together. I met a friend in gym class over the love of Harry Potter, one girl I befriended in Spanish class over our love of writing and the series, another I met freshmen year in science—I am still friends with them today. We talked about the upcoming films, planned our Deathly Hallows Part 2 midnight showing, laughed about the Starkid musicals…

I suppose I came here to say that when I started reading that first Harry Potter book in 2001, I didn’t expect to fall in love. And I wouldn’t have dreamed that fourteen years later, I would still be just as obsessed and in love (probably a teensy bit more obsessed).

I JUST LOVE HARRY POTTER OKAY. *cuddles with books and films and tshirts and posters and ties and wands and magazine articles and…*

The Greatest Expectation

A few days ago, someone my brother and I knew, a mom of kids we went to school with, started working with him in a bakery. And she asked after me. Not after what I was doing with my career, or what I was doing with school, however. She asked if I was married or not.

My brother passed it off as silly, laughing as he closed the door to my bedroom, where I had been sitting with a whiteboard, plotting my fantasy work in progress. The marker hung in my hand. So strange to hear after this woman since I hadn’t seen her daughter since 8^th grade. So strange that her daughters are married already. So strange that she would assume I was married…and not bother asking anything else about me at all.*

Strange? The more I thought about it, not so much.

Marriage is not for everyone—women or men, but it is pushed onto women more often than men. Men can be independent without judgment, and if someone asks about them, odds are it won’t be about marriage. After all, how often are they asked who they’re wearing at the academy awards?

I hate the idea that women are viewed as having to want or having to be married. News flash! Not everyone wants the same thing, and if a woman wants to do it single then she should do so without judgment. She should be able to—but she’s not. This is the 21^st century, people. How often are we going to pretend we’re in the Middle Ages? No, she doesn’t have to be married to accomplish everything she needs to succeed in life. No, she doesn’t have to be attached to a man, either. She can do what she dreams, with or without a husband.

Even if she wants to be married, she can still fulfill her dreams. There should be nothing standing in her way. In anyone’s way.

“Did she go to school? Where? What is she doing now?” are all questions that could have been asked from this Mom who blasted to the bakery from 2007. Instead, they all fell to the ground, only to be trampled by strangers in passing.

*For the record, yes, I do want to eventually get married. But my writing, at this point in my life, is more important, as is my career.