Thanks Jo

It's probably over done, isn't it, writing about the end of Harry Potter? So, I won't. Although it soooo tempting.

I do want to say this though, Harry, JKR really, has given me many more gifts than just seven fine stories. I have loved the stories and suffer mostly deeply from Post Potter Depression at the end of each, but what these stories have brought into my life goes beyond that enjoyment, deeper and further.

I've said for years that it if weren't for Harry Potter I would be so old by now. HP has kept me young because so many of the fans are young. I get to listen to them talk about the books and the movies and the video games and through those conversations I also get to hear what they love, are excited about and passionate about. I've connected with my own children, my students, my baby sitters, my kids' friends, and random kids that I meet. I actually have one facebook friend that I met in multiple midnight openings of Harry Potter. Some of the kids barely meet the definition of kid, but if it weren't for Harry, our age difference might leave an insurmountable gap. The Harry Potter books give us a common experience to talk about the common experience of living in a way that so often eludes people of different generations.

It's thanks to a podcast called
Mugglecast
that I've learned about chat, U-stream, Twitter, Digg, Audible, and podcasting all before any of my friends from my own generation. (Well, except for Charlotte of course, which is no surprise since she sent me my first Harry Potter book.) I also learned about far less useful, but still interesting things like Comic-Con, fan fiction and shipping. (Look them up for yourself, urban dictionary
.)I also learned not to underestimate "kids." I have seen Harry Potter fans start and finish projects that many adults wouldn't be able to take on.

JKR gave me other, more important, gifts as well. The one that stands out most clearly in mind is really a gift she gave my children. Many people have complained over the years that the books are too dark for children; there's too much death. Unlike other authors, though, who delve into darkness that very few children actually have to deal with, Jo Rowling writes about a darkness we all have to face, the death of friends and family, our own death. We all face grief in life and how we face it shapes us for better or worse.

When a main character of the books died, my nine year old daughter built a shrine for him in her bedroom. The tears she cried were real. The loss of a fictional friend was no less acute for being fictional; it just didn't last as long. A few years later, however, when a classmate died, she knew about erecting monuments and gathering with friends to remember those who are no longer with us.

Two Christmases ago my son bought a pet snake that had been hatched in his classroom. He loved that snake in a way that makes no sense to me. It can't love you back, you can't cuddle with it, you can't even play with it really. But for whatever reason, JD loved that snake. Just a few days after this last Christmas I heard a horrified scream from my upstairs. I could just tell that it wasn't the usual hollering that comes with having three children. I ran up the stairs to see JD limply dangling the dead snake in his hands. The anguished look on his face dropped my guts to my toes.

It took a long time of just sitting with him as he cried over the snake before he was ready to move on to some kind of closure for this snake's life. You remember that it was just past Christmas when this happened, right? And we live in the great white North, so burying the snake was quite an involved processes. We had to scrape away snow, build a little fire in the ground to thaw it, and then dig a hole. JD wanted to do it all himself. Before all this he first made a little casket lined with the pocket from the sweatshirt where he used to carry the snake. I tried to offer to help and I was brushed away. So I sat there helpless in the snow watching my son try to work through his tears to dig a hole in the frozen ground with one hand, while holding a snake casket in the other. As I watched, I kept thinking of Harry digging a grave for Dobby (don't scold me for spoiling the book for you; you should have read it by now) without the help of magic. Of Ron and Dean putting little socks and a hat on him. Of Luna closing his eyes. JD had learned from Harry that the way you grieve a friend is to pour yourself into a task.

I wish there was a way that I could really thank Jo for what she's given me, but I actually think she knows. She knows because it's not just me. She's received hundreds, thousands, of letters from fans thanking her for the same things I would thank her for.