Fade to Exit

I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 11:51 p.m. last night. Now, quit your squinting, I'm not going to toss out any spoilers here--even though you've had ample time to finish the book. It's only 800-and-some pages.

This particular post is not so much about what I read, but how I read it. Sneaking it in a breakfast. Staying up an hour more after a particularly late night of writing. And then, last night, slamming down some 200 pages to wrap it up.

And all that done between phone calls (Where tomorrow night, sorella?) and text messages (519, safe to talk?) with my sister.

Each night for the past week, we'd meet for our long-distance book club over the phone, whine about Harry's whining, hatch our theories, and make our reading plans. Last night, we ended up calling each other every hour from about 7 p.m. to 12 midnight, to discuss unfolding plots.

I'll miss the characters, living and/or dead, but more than that I'll miss the urgency, passion, and sisterly small talk that Harry Potter brought to my week.

Nearly Averted Spoiler: No. 1

I bought my copy of Deathly Hallows yesterday at Costco.

(Have you heard of this book? Very obscure author has written seven much underpublicized books about young wizards, the power of love, and its struggle against imminent evil?)

I bought it at 2:30 p.m. I know, that makes me so much less of fan than I purported to be, but I have a young child, who [whisper] doesn't get Harry Potter [/whisper]. So my begging and pleading and whining and tantrums lost out to his dire and unquenchable and, really, much louder expression of need to visit the hippos at the zoo. (Yes, page taken. I will not be so easily thwarted next time . . .)

So after the hippos, we headed to Costco for the grocery classics: high-fiber bread, Omega-3 eggs, organic milk, and Harry Potter.

I was worried they would sell out. Really, I'm serious. I panicked the whole way past the leopards, the gorillas, the alligators, the rhino, and the hippos--who I'm not sure we actually saw because I was in full neurosis by then. But when I saw the heaping table of Potters, with nary a swarm, I felt much relieved. And quite excited. And, maybe, just a little, ashamed.

I sauntered up to another woman who seemed to be gingerly selecting her copy. She picked up a book, flipped for a page count, then, incomprehensibly, Put the Book Down.

What?

"Not that much into Harry Potter?" I asked as I wheeled Finn and the cart closer to Potter mountain. When I get giddy (or drunk, sometimes it's hard to tell), I get social.

She looked up and smiled. "I just read the last page. Everyone's wondering about whether Harry lives or dies. I figured that would be on the last page."

Just the last page?

I felt bad for her--that she didn't have a connection to these characters that so many other folks do. That she would carelessly jump to the final resolution without any emotional investment.

I plan to read Potter as slowly as I can. I mean, this is the last book. This could be the last moments I get to spend with these people. You know, I have a longer relationship with them than I do many other real people who have too easily come and gone from my life.

(And, of course, I also remember how distraught I was when I put down Return of the King only to find out the Tolkien had died. Like 10 years before I picked it up.)

I'm really not all that eager to give them up and push them out the door.

How could she start and stop at the last page? Did she even read the ot. . .

And then I got scared. It hit me. She has information. She knows. And then the panic that I thought I had left with the hippos came screaming after me.

I grabbed my Hallows, and I mean this literally, put my hands over my ears and started chanting, "I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it" as I rolled Finn as fast and far away as I could.

Mental, to be sure. But I couldn't take the chance that she might suck the very soul out of the Potterverse and just throw it out there like some kind of talking Patronus. She could ruin it, all seven books, the lives that I have welcomed into my home and heart, the dreams that I have for Harry, Hermoine, and Ron, and their dreams, too, as yet unrealized by all the throngs who have not yet turned that page, and with no more thought than she gives to her choice of blueberry or strawberry yogurt sample.

So I ran. Earmuffed and howling.

It's not like I had a choice. I mean, people can't, like, disapparate, you know. C'mon, people, ever heard of fiction? It is just a book.

One Week One Day

I haven't counted anything down since, well, I was going to say since I was a teacher and I "helped" my students countdown to winter holiday, or labor day, or Friday, or seventh period, or 2:05, but really it was just a few weeks ago when we thought we were taking that trip to Mexico that we had planned for four months. Then, just as when I was a teacher or a student (of varying degrees and maturity), I pulled out my calendar and slashed, hash marked, and tallied my way to that dreamy destination, that ultimate, if brief freedom, that coveted prize.

And, except for my moment of beachy weakness, I really didn't expect I'd be jumping into the countdown so soon. Or late. You know, in life. Because whittling away the minutes, hours, or days just seems like it's heading in the wrong direction. I'm getting of the ripeness where I should be holding on to those fleeting moments, not casting them away so carelessly.

Add to that confusion and backasswardness that I'm actually admitting to this on my blog. Well, this entry is just so wrong.

But counting I am. And inverting my predicates as I go. One week and one day. And by now, you're chomping at the bit, you're tapping your fingers, you're grabbing your monitor in your hands and shaking it like you would an iBook that's gone on the fritz, screaming, begging me to tell you what it is that I'm so damn adolescent about.

That is, unless you're doing it, too.

One week and one day, folks. Until . . . Harry Potter. Which really is just a cruel crumb of a two-week-and-four-day cupcake away from the big tasty, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Now, try to tell me--and try to be convincing--that you don't have a secret stash of tally marks that's counting the days until Harry and his crew resurface. (Spoiler alert! Will they really abandon Hogwarts?) Just try. And I still won't believe you.

I haven't had this much pent up anticipation since Duran Duran came to town when I was an eighth grade. Or since, ahem, the days of premarital sex. This is an event. A butterflies-aflurry, will-the-day-ever-arrive, and can-I-possibly-survive-the-wait ardor.

We just don't get many events like this in life. And at the ripe age of 29-very-plus, those moments of delayed requiting seem fewer and fewer. We just don't have to wait for things as long anymore and those things that are dangled in front of us for months or years on end (re: Phantom Menace, Matrix Revolutions, adulthood) often aren't worth their measure of marketing.

But Harry, I have high hopes for you, lad. I have questions that need to be answered. I have people I want to see resurrected. I have acting I'd like to see redeemed. And so, on you, Harry, I pin my hopes of the world. Be my light, Harry. Be my salvation.

And of course, if you don't put out for me, Harry, it's only six months until season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.