Opening a box of corsages from high school dances flooded my mind with thoughts of my first slow dance to Ray J's "One Wish", with my first real girlfriend. After that song was my first kiss. Of all the worst songs, it was a sad we-broke-up-I-want-you-back rap song. Shitty. I remember not caring at the time; I was busy going through an entire pack of Altoids (very sneakily of course: ninja status).
Inside a Captain Black tobacco can, I have memoirs of Papa. Coins he collected, a parachute cutter from his piloting days in the Air Force during Vietnam. His old military ID badge mugshot, with peeling plastic laminate stares at me with a soldier's hard face. Among a few other items, there's a photo I took with a disposable camera my uncle gave me at Christmas. His body, once large, plump, and healthy, is withered and ancient with cancer. He is not smiling. He is not happy that his grandson is framing a memory of a dying man with little hope to live. His eyes beg me not to take the picture; this is not how I should remember him. I should always recall him as the kind, heartily laughing grandpa that sang in the truck, and gave love to his family. But I being eight years old, did not understand. I regret torturing him with the camera flash and light-capturing lens.
But true nostalgia, I had not felt until last night.
After watching the last Harry Potter movie again, I wanted to re-read the entire series with the full understanding of all the events unfolding. Knowing the great secret of Harry Potter's destiny, the hidden love story behind Severus Snape and Lilly Potter (which is the most beautiful love story I've yet to encounter), the dark past of Albus Dumbledore's quest for power, and all the other facts of the series might lead me to a stronger understanding of the entangled stories. I wanted to dissect the books for symbols, foreshadowing, themes, and motifs. Was I not at some point THE great expert of the series? My knowledge was not so vast after the fifth book, for I had begun to outgrow listening to the audio CD's all day long and reading nothing but what I had already memorized (and I had memorized the first five books).
So I pulled "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" from my shelf, blew the dust from the top, and engulfed myself in the words I had read and listened to a hundred times (quite literally). By chapter four, I found a book mark. A lightning bolt drawn with blue, metallic gel pen above my adolescent handwriting of "Harry Potter". I stopped reading and after a moment of staring at the small slip of paper, fitted it into wedge of the open books pages.
Pulse...pulse...pulse...I felt the light throb of my heartbeat against the cream-white paper. A younger me had held this book and craved every detail of the hidden, magical world. I knew every name and as much of their history as JK Rowling would offer. From the main characters to those that were only slightly alluded too, I at one point had known all there was to know. Each spell, each potion, any location mentioned, I was muggle master of the magical world.
Why did I dedicate myself to it all so wholly? Why did my entire life at one point revolve around this fantastical world? A boy escaped the daily monotony of "normal life" into something unbelievably magnificent. By surrounding myself with the "Harry Potter" universe, I too could escape. I hoped, at one point, for nothing more than a letter by owl to take me to Hogwarts, or ANY wizarding school.
When my eleventh September 1st came and went, I was wholly disappointed at the truth: I was a muggle and would never be accepted into the world of magic. But maybe the American schools had a different age requirement! Yes, that's surely the case..my letter will come.
But no letter ever came. And slowly, I stepped from Harry Potter's world into boring, cold reality. Muggle life. My entire past seems but a dream.
Holding the first book of a series I once poured my entire being into, I yearn to return simpler times. When all I had to worry about was getting a letter by owl, inviting me from the muggle world and into the hidden life of wizards and witches. Who knows, maybe American schools don't accept you until you're 21?
