Books

Purpose

 

Hugo: Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some rea­son? They are built to make you laugh, or tell the time, or to fill you with won­der. Maybe that’s why a bro­ken machine always makes me a lit­tle sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do.

Maybe it’s the same with peo­ple. If you lose your pur­pose … it’s like you’re broken.

Isabelle: Like Papa Georges?

Hugo: Maybe … maybe we can fix him.

Isabelle: So is that your pur­pose? Fix­ing things?

Hugo: I don’t know. Maybe.

Isabelle: Then what’s my pur­pose?

Hugo: I don’t know.

Hugo: I like to imag­ine that the world is one big machine. You know machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact num­ber and type of parts they need.

So I fig­ure if the entire world is big machine, I have to be here for some rea­son. And that means you have to be here for some rea­son, too.

Don’t Stop Believing

Last night Hubby & I were “hangin’” at the local cof­fee house, both of us on our lap­tops. Well … actu­ally, Hubby was work­ing while I just putzed around. And really, I should have been fin­ish­ing up on the “quickie” knit project I’ve been work­ing on for the past two weeks (so much for quick!). Or I could have been catch­ing up on some much needed blog read­ing. But instead I surfed the web. And lis­tened to some tunes off of Hubby’s laptop.

I guess I should pref­ace this by say­ing that I usu­ally rely on Hubby to update my iPod. He’s the one who uploaded most our songs from our CD col­lec­tion into our dig­i­tal library. He’s usu­ally the one to find new artists and songs on the web for us. If there’s a cer­tain tune I’m itch­ing to hear, he’s the one that finds it and uploads it on my iPod. Many times when I stick my ear­buds on at work (to drown out those loud co-​​workers while try­ing to con­cen­trate), I end up find­ing lit­tle gems on my iPod.

journey_escapeFor exam­ple, one week I had this incred­i­ble urge to hear that one Jo​.an Je​.tt song from that one movie she was in with Mi.chael J. Fox, but for the life of me I couldn’t remem­ber the name of the song, let alone the name of the movie. (Oh yeah, I can hear y’all try­ing to remem­ber it now, too … ) The next day at work, what do I find on my iPod? Uh-​​huh … He’s such a great guy, isn’t he?! I think so.

Any­way, lately Hubby’s been on an “Under $5″ deal at the iTunes store, where you can pur­chase either movies or albums online for $4.99. Last week he got some great 80’s movies to watch on our iTouch. And this week? Well … that’s what we were lis­ten­ing to last night; the “Escape” album from Jour­ney. “Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit” … Lis­ten­ing to it is totally flash­ing me back to grow­ing up in the ‘burbs of Detroit back in the early 80’s.

I was telling Hubby that I remem­ber that this par­tic­u­lar album was one of those “tapes” that Dr. Bro bought dur­ing his one “stint” at the whole Co.lumb.ia H.ouse “Eight Tapes for a Penny” deals; the expen­sive ship­ping cost paid for by mow­ing neigh­bors’ lawns and sav­ing his weekly allowances. So lis­ten­ing to the whole album in it’s entirety is like step­ping back to the sum­mers where Dr. Bro and I would ride around our neigh­bor­hood with our “bike gang.” And sum­mers with swim­ming lessons at the local mid­dle school.

When cel­e­brat­ing my mid-​​summer birth­day meant either camp­ing out of town or head­ing down to the county “wave pool.” Where sum­mers were spent earn­ing money by babysit­ting the neigh­bor­hood kids. Of which were even­tu­ally spent at the local B. Dalton’s buy­ing books … and then read­ing them late at night under the cov­ers with the flashlight.

The "Bike Gang"

The “Bike Gang”

Those days seem like such a life­time away; even though it was only 25 years ago dur­ing this life­time. It was a time of naivety; a time of feel­ing care-​​free. Espe­cially dur­ing sum­mers which, in it’s own, was a time of free­dom. No timetable to con­form to, no expec­ta­tions to fin­ish homework.

Refer­ring back to yesterday’s post … it was sim­ply a time of feel­ing as if any­thing was pos­si­ble. As if the whole future was yet to be dis­cov­ered. As if believ­ing in any dream made could actu­ally come true.

I miss those days. I miss not hav­ing to con­form to a daily rou­tine. And I miss not hav­ing expec­ta­tions of oth­ers; and oth­ers not hav­ing expec­ta­tions of me. I miss that feel­ing of the future being so far ahead of us … slightly out of reach, but still within the realm of real­ity. Still believ­ing that any­thing is possible.

There are some days that I truly wish I could go back to that moment and relive it with the knowl­edge I have now. But then I remem­ber that the choices and deci­sions I’ve made are what has made me into the per­son I am today. Bruised and a bit bro­ken … but oth­er­wise ready to face yet another chal­lenge. Espe­cially now that I’ve got that “sec­ond chance” I’ve been wait­ing for so long.

Jour­ney was right not to stop believing.

& ‘Riting">Reading & ‘Riting

Well, today is Day 5 of our vaca­tion in the Banff, Alberta area. We’ve been so busy since arriv­ing to this beau­ti­ful area that today is the first day I’ve actu­ally had the chance to sit down and write. And to tell you the truth, I’d rather be fin­ish­ing up the novel I started read­ing on the plane ride down here than com­pose a string of words to form a sen­tence. BUT … I fig­ured if I don’t do it now, I may never get around to it until I get back. And quite hon­estly, I think I’d for­get all that we’ve done here on our vacation.

I have to tell you, I am so utterly enthralled with the scenery sur­round­ing Banff National Park (BNP). Not only do the majes­tic moun­tains con­tin­u­ously sur­round you at every turn, but all the water … Ack! It’s pure heaven for the Can­cer­ian water-​​sign girl in me. The col­ors are sim­ply amaz­ing. You know how when you see pic­tures of cer­tain bod­ies of water that are so bril­liantly blue in color but when you actu­ally see the water with your own eyes … it’s just this brownish-​​greyish color? Nope. Not here. Every pic­ture I’ve ever seen of Lake Louise cap­tures the exact same hue of turquoise that I’ve now seen IRL. It’s. That. Bril­liant. And pretty much every lake we encoun­tered was that shade of blue or … gasp … even deeper.

The thing about Lake Louise though is that it’s an incred­i­bly calm and quiet lake. So quiet that the sur­face of the lake actu­ally looks like glass. And because its sur­rounded by these beau­ti­ful moun­tains, you can actu­ally see the reflec­tion of them in the water. Hubby & I decided to rent a canoe for the hour to try to make it to the other end of the lake, but nope … we didn’t make it. How­ever, in the process we were able to get some incred­i­ble pic­tures that we would have never been able to get oth­er­wise. Out of all the things we’ve done thus far, I have to say that canoe­ing Lake Louise was one of the bright­est highlights.

Not that we didn’t do other sight­see­ing things … in fact we did do quite a bit in these past five days. We took a gon­dola ride up Sul­fur Moun­tain and then pro­ceeded to climb the up to the sum­mit … some­thing my Dad didn’t think he could do and then did it on his own time. (Yay Dad!) We drove west on the Trans-​​Canada High­way and then up to the high­est point of pass­ing in BNP. Along the way, we saw more beau­ti­ful lakes and glac­i­ers! I’ve never seen glac­i­ers in my life, so to see how ginor­mous one is … it was incred­i­ble. We stopped at Crow­foot Glac­ier, which was named because it was appro­pri­ately shaped like a crow’s foot with its three fin­gers clutch­ing the moun­tain­side. Unfor­tu­nately, the lower fin­ger has pretty much melted (damn global warm­ing!) and all that’s left is the top fin­ger and half a mid­dle fin­ger (oh … the jokes I could make … :-p ). We’ve done tons of walk­ing that we would have prob­a­bly lost some weight. If only we didn’t go around eat­ing lots of good meals!

One of the best things we did for our­selves was an hour-​​massage at a spa located by one of the nat­ural hot springs in Banff. And despite the fact that we arrived about 15 minute late, not only did we get an incred­i­bly relax­ing mas­sage but the staff was kind enough to actu­ally give us the whole hour mas­sage! What a great way to help us destress.

We spent Canada Day (July 1st, for my fel­low Amer­i­cans) with my cousin and her hubby & 10-​​month old son at their house in Cal­gary. And that was just sim­ply won­der­ful. So won­der­ful that I’ll prob­a­bly post more about it in another future post.

And tomor­row on the 4th of July, we’re head­ing back to Cal­gary for the day. For … da da da dum … the Cal­gary Stam­pede! Who’d a thunk that a city-​​gal would want to go see a rodeo or a chuck­wagon race? Or sur­round her­self with all things Country-​​Western … Well, hey, because Cal­gary is known as the “Nashville of the North,” I fig­ured that “when in Rome” …

So that’s what we’ve been up to this week thus far. Per­haps when I get back I’ll have more sto­ries to tell, along with pic­tures of my cousin and Hubby with their adorable 10 month old.

And now … back to read­ing. And relaxing.

Have a great 4th of July, everyone!

When the Old-​​Fashion Way Isn’t Working … A Book Review

I’m finally liv­ing up to a promise that I made to Day­zofRain. (Although I’m pretty sure that she thought I must have for­got about it!) But after over a month of non­stop hol­i­day stuff, fol­lowed by the two untimely trips to Vir­ginia Beach, I have finally com­pleted the first of the two tasks I’ve been given. This post, to do a book review, is the sec­ond task.

To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure of the rea­son why Day­zofRain specif­i­cally con­tacted me but I was truly hon­ored to do so as I am an avid reader. Okay, so I mostly dig chick lit (sounds like chew­ing gum) but I do truly enjoy immers­ing myself in a good book.

The book I was assigned to read was “Hav­ing a Baby… When the Old-​​Fasion Way Isn’t Work­ing: Hope and Help for Every­one Fac­ing Infer­til­ity” by none other than the RESOLVE celebrity spokesper­son, Cindy Mar­go­lis. For those of you who aren’t famil­iar with RESOLVE, they are the nation’s lead­ing voice for women or men expe­ri­enc­ing infer­til­ity. And for those not famil­iar with Cindy Mar­go­lis, she’s a model and an ex-​​Baywatch girl who is also famous for being the “Most Down­loaded Woman on the Internet.”

Now, I can almost hear those of you out there think­ing, “How the HECK does a swim­suit actress/​model end up becom­ing a spokesper­son for RESOLVE and, to top it off, end up writ­ing a book about infer­til­ity?!” Well, it’s because she and her hus­band have expe­ri­ence in going through infer­til­ity; in fact they have almost 10 years of expe­ri­ence in this sub­ject matter.

After mar­ry­ing her hus­band in 1998, Cindy and her hus­band, Guy, set out to start their fam­ily right away. Unfor­tu­nately it took 3 years, three failed IUI’s along with three failed IVF’s before bring­ing their son, Nicholas, into the world. It also took another one failed IVF and one sur­ro­gate preg­nancy before adding bio­log­i­cal twin daugh­ters, Sierra and Sab­rina, to their family.

I, myself, first found out about Cindy Mar­go­lis’ expe­ri­ences in infer­til­ity a few years ago, before the birth of her twin daugh­ters. One week­day on my day off from work (prob­a­bly less than a year after my own failed IVF expe­ri­ence), I hap­pened to be flip­ping through chan­nels and stum­bled onto a pro­gram on VH1, called “Cindy Mar­go­lis Inside Out.” I had never paid atten­tion to Cindy’s career in the past, but when I heard her talk­ing about her strug­gle with infer­til­ity, I put down the remote con­trol and watched. The show doc­u­mented the one IVF expe­ri­ence they went through as they tried to give Nicholas a sib­ling. I was fas­ci­nated and amazed that a celebrity would be out there let­ting the world know what it was like, emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally, to go through infer­til­ity and IVF.

As it turns out, Hubby hap­pened to call home dur­ing one of the com­mer­cial breaks just to check in. When I told him what I was watch­ing, he told me that I prob­a­bly shouldn’t be watch­ing that pro­gram. When I asked why, he sim­ply said that it was bet­ter that I didn’t. Well … being the stub­born per­son I was, I ignored Hubby’s warn­ing and watched the rest of the pro­gram. Now, if you haven’t put two and two together from the pre­vi­ous para­graph above, this pro­gram was doc­u­ment­ing the one failed IVF attempt that they went through before decid­ing to go through sur­ro­gacy. And since I didn’t heed Hubby’s warn­ing, I found myself cry­ing inconsolably.

So back in mid-​​December, Day­zofRain asked me to read this book, I was excited to do so. Ever since see­ing that VH1 pro­gram (which, coin­ci­den­tally, I haven’t seen since … nor can I find much about it on the inter­net), I wanted to know what Cindy had to say and con­tribute about infer­til­ity and options.

In the book, Cindy shares rather can­didly her whole expe­ri­ence from try­ing to get preg­nant, to being diag­nosed with “unex­plained infer­til­ity,” to the emo­tional lows of failed ART pro­ce­dures, to finally the emo­tional highs of finally becom­ing a fam­ily. And in between her own sto­ries, she included other’s expe­ri­ences of suc­cess and fail­ures in their attempt to have a baby. For me, read­ing all those sto­ries and all the emo­tional roller coast­ers was sim­ply val­i­da­tion that I was not as crazy as I thought I was.

In addi­tion to other people’s expe­ri­ences, she does include quite a bit of resources. At the end of each sec­tion, whether it be about find­ing a good RE to find­ing dif­fer­ent agen­cies for sur­ro­gates or donor egg /​ sperm or adop­tion, she lists many orga­ni­za­tions and their addresses/​websites to con­tact with any ques­tions or request for infor­ma­tion. These lists are not all-​​inclusive, but they do pro­vide a start­ing point for doing some research.

On a per­sonal level, the only thing I found lack­ing in this book was infor­ma­tion on adop­tion. The book only includes one chap­ter of infor­ma­tion on adop­tion to the six or so chap­ters devoted to var­i­ous ways to have your own bio­log­i­cal child (either through IVF, sur­ro­gacy, donor egg/​sperm). It skims through the var­i­ous pro­grams (inter­na­tional vs domes­tic; open vs closed) over one page within that chap­ter. While that one chap­ter did have an inspir­ing story that deeply touched me, I wish there would have been more infor­ma­tion. Espe­cially infor­ma­tion about get­ting through the grief of not being able to become preg­nant, to sus­tain a preg­nancy, or to have a bio­log­i­cal child of your own. As Cindy’s jour­ney did not take her on the adop­tion route, I am sure that is one rea­son why there isn’t much included in this book.

Over­all, the book is an easy read, espe­cially for those that are pretty new to the infer­til­ity jour­ney. The back of the book con­tains a glos­sary of the most basic ART terms as well as a recap of all the resources at the end of each sec­tion. For those that are “sea­soned” in the quest for a baby, espe­cially for those who are already in the process or have already gone through the var­i­ous ART pro­ce­dures, this book may be too sim­ple. How­ever, the per­sonal sto­ries (includ­ing the elu­sive male point of view as well as a sur­ro­gate mom’s point of view) are enough to keep you inter­ested in reading.

So. There you have it. My home­work is done. Just in time, because I was run­ning out of excuses to make up for not doing it sooner. I can only use the excuse that “the cat used my paper as her lit­ter box” for so long.

“PS I Love You” … and Other Emotions">“PS I Love You” … and Other Emotions

I love the book, “PS I Love You” by Cecilia Ahern. I picked it up used at the local B&N a few years ago, just in time to bring it with me to our trip to Seat­tle. And as I was sit­ting on the plane read­ing the book, I would need to dig through my purse just to find a nap­kin or a piece of tis­sue paper just to wipe all the fallen tears. It was THAT good of a book for me.

When I found out that they were mak­ing the book into a movie … let alone star­ring Hilary Swank, play­ing the lead char­ac­ter, Holly Kennedy … I had my appre­hen­sions. First of all, the book was sup­posed to be based in Ire­land and yet the movie is in NYC. Sec­ond, it was star­ring Hilary Swank. Don’t get me wrong … she’s awe­some in any of her Acad­emy Award per­for­mances, but I just didn’t see her play­ing Holly.

What got me to the the­ater instead, was them darn trail­ers. That and see­ing that not only Denny (from Grey’s Anatomy) was in it, but Ger­ard But­ler (King Leonides from “300”) was play­ing the hus­band. Yum. (Yes, along with Johnny Depp … I have a sick fas­ci­na­tion for cer­tain celebs.)

One week­end, I dragged Hubby to the the­ater to see it. And hon­estly, although there are parts of the movie that aggre­vated me, I did like the movie. It cer­tainly does not fol­low the plot exactly to the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the book (I mean, really … what book-​​to-​​film movie ever does …), but it high­lights much of the same core emo­tions that got me in the book. There’s one scene in par­tic­u­lar that totally got me. It’s one of those rare sit­u­a­tions where see­ing it on film right in front of you is ten times bet­ter than read­ing the book.

(If you’re want­ing to see the movie and/​or read the book, I sug­gest you skip the next two paragraph.)

*
 At this point in the movie, Holly is on a week­end trip with her girl­friends, all set up and paid for by her hus­band prior to his death. Her one friend just con­fessed that she was finally get­ting mar­ried. Her other friend also con­fesses that she’s (finally) preg­nant. The look on Holly’s face said it all. While she was happy for them, she couldn’t help but be sad for her­self. Then after the ini­tial “Yay! We’re so excited about the news in our lives!” the sub­ject was sud­denly and akwardly dropped.

What’s more is later, Holly over­hears her friends in the other room still overly excited about each other’s announce­ment and hears them plan­ning for the next stage in their lives. It was non­stop chat­ter, while Holly stood there just look­ing utterly sad and alone.

*

At that point in the movie, I just com­pletely lost it. Tears were stream­ing down my face while Hubby held me tight. I turned to him at that point and said, “I know exactly how she feels.”

And I totally did. It’s that feel­ing of empti­ness inside of me. That black hole that some days I think will never be filled up. And in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, the more hap­pi­ness other peo­ple have in their lives, the deeper I feel like climb­ing into that big black abyss and just not resur­fac­ing until all the excite­ment dies down.

It’s not because I’m being self­ish (as later on in the movie, it was pointed out to Holly that she act­ing that way … pissed me off, too. Grrr …) or that I’m not happy for the other per­son. It’s not even jeal­ousy that dri­ves me to feel that way. It’s the feel­ing that I should be able to have some of that hap­pi­ness too. That I’m enti­tled to have those type of excit­ing moments in my life as well.

Yes, I can hear peo­ple say … “Well, you can’t just expect hap­pi­ness to hap­pen. You have to make those moments hap­pen for your­self.” And that’s where I say to that per­son, “What makes you think that I haven’t tried?”

I have put myself through every­thing pos­si­ble to become preg­nant with my Hubby & my bio­log­i­cal child. I have had enough pro­ce­dures to “clear” me out to last me a life­time. I have suf­fered through months of pok­ing myself with nee­dles to help cre­ate the “opti­mum con­di­tions” to impreg­nate me. I have dealt with month after month after years of hope at the begin­ning of my cycle fol­lowed by fail­ure at the end of my cycle. I suf­fered the ulti­mate blow with my one failed attempt at IVF. I feel I have spent enough time and money and emo­tions of try­ing to get to that hap­pi­ness. And yet here I am, bar­ren and still childless.

So don’t tell me that I haven’t tried to cre­ate that bio­log­i­cal child of mine … that excit­ing moment I’ve been want­ing for the past ten-​​plus years. And don’t tell me that I’m being self­ish for feel­ing as angry as I do at those times. And please please PLEASE don’t say to me, “Well, you could always adopt.” The truth is, we are look­ing into that option, but I still need to grieve the fact that I can­not pro­duce my own bio­log­i­cal child. And I will never know what it’s like to be preg­nant. And I will never know what it’s like to breast-​​feed. The fact that I won’t be able to even announce to our fam­ily and friends that Hubby & I are preg­nant is enough to grieve.

So please allow me have those moments of sad­ness and anger about my child­less sit­u­a­tion. And please, even though I find it dif­fi­cult to talk about … push me to do so. Because, while it’s ten times eas­ier to write or blog about it, some­times hav­ing the phys­i­cal human touch behind it makes me feel less alone and more loved.

PS Thanks for let­ting me vent.

Harry Potter Mania

Okay, I fully admit it. I love Harry Pot­ter. No, not in that sick sense where I would have a crush on a fic­tional char­ac­ter (although ask me later about my unhealthy obses­sion over Cap­tain Jack Spar­row — aka Johnny Depp), but in the sense that I love the series of books by JK Rowl­ing.

I have been an avid reader all my life. I thank my par­ents, par­tic­u­larly my mom, for this habit. I remem­ber both my par­ents read­ing to my brother and me when we were lit­tle; always bed­time sto­ries. Later, it would be the weekly Sat­ur­day trip to the local library where, every sum­mer until high school, I would take part in their sum­mer read­ing pro­gram. I can remem­ber being dragged to the mall (before I liked to go shop­ping) and beg­ging my par­ents to leave me at the book­store (B. Dalton’s, remem­ber them?) so I could read books while my mom or dad went shop­ping. I would spend my allowance on books and, even­tu­ally when I got my first job (babysit­ting), I would spend my earn­ings on books as well.

One of my ear­li­est and fond­est child­hood mem­o­ries was mak­ing my mom read “Fox in Socks” by Dr. Seuss. If you have ever read that book, it is quite the tongue-​​twister of a book. The lit­tle devil on my shoul­der used to make my mom read it faster and faster each time, which would inevitably make her mix up her words. I fully appre­ci­ate the fact that she humored me now, as the last time I read the book was to my nephew on one of his sleep­overs at our house quite a few years back. It was that same exact book, tat­tered and masking-​​taped together, that I read while he was cud­dled up to me in bed. I love that book as much as I love the mem­o­ries it invokes.

Why do I love read­ing so much? I am an admit­ted and full-​​fledged day­dreamer. I have, what my par­ents prob­a­bly said to me over and over again while grow­ing up, an “over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion.” I love read­ing sto­ries and “see­ing” in my mind the scene that is described to me in words or imag­in­ing exactly how a con­ver­sa­tion occurs in the con­text of the book. I love the way a good book evokes a range of emo­tions, from angry to sad to happy to sur­prised and of being able to go through those emo­tions with every turn of a page. And when that last page is turned, I love the sat­is­fac­tion of clos­ing the back cover of the book and tak­ing in the whole story while going through my mind what I loved (or hated — or both) about it.

Now, I love movies as well. How­ever, if given the choice of movies and books, I’d prob­a­bly choose to read. While I fully appre­ci­ate the art behind sto­ry­telling in mak­ing movies, there is still noth­ing like imag­in­ing it in my head. That’s why when­ever I’ve seen a movie that’s been adapted from a book, I will always (okay, nine times out of ten) will inevitably say “The book was MUCH bet­ter than the movie!” There are just some things, like plays on words or abstract descrip­tions, that just can’t be trans­lated lit­er­ally into a film. And that is one of the things (if not, THE biggest thing) that I enjoy about reading.

Hubby and I started read­ing Harry Pot­ter in 2000 at the rec­om­men­da­tion of an older co-​​worker, who just hap­pened to work in the Michi­gan Film Office. She knew that the two of us enjoyed read­ing and told us that the writ­ing and the uni­verse cre­ated in the series was really good. When hubby told me about her sug­ges­tion, my first thought was, “A children’s book? Why she would rec­om­mend a children’s book?” Nev­er­the­less, we picked up a copy of the first book at the local Border’s store and, while dri­ving around on an errand one Sat­ur­day, hubby opened to the first page (I was dri­ving, by the way) and read aloud:

“Mr and Mrs Durs­ley, of num­ber four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were per­fectly nor­mal, thank you very much.”

I was hooked. We spent the rest of the week­end read­ing the book aloud; each read­ing a chap­ter at each turn. Both of us chuck­led when­ever we were described some­thing par­tic­u­larly funny, excited when we read about the first quid­ditch game, sad when­ever we were told about Harry’s par­ents, and incred­i­bly amazed by the turn of events towards the end of the book. We went on to read the next book and part of the third book together.

Being the impa­tient one in the rela­tion­ship, I went ahead and read book four that was just pub­lished that year in 2000. With the fol­low­ing books, I forced hubby to stand in line with me to get them on the days they were released (July 2003 in Border’s in Chicago and July 2005 at Meijer’s in Rochester Hills). After watch­ing the “Gob­let of Fire” movie in Novem­ber 2005 (book five), hubby finally went back to read­ing the series; partly because we enjoyed to movie so much, but also because other (younger) cousins and I kept dri­ving him insane about the the end­ing of book six and spec­u­la­tions about what would hap­pen in book seven which was to be the last book in the series.

So it was this past Fri­day that we found our­selves once again in line (at Meijer’s in Royal Oak) before mid­night to pick up “Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows.” Part of me wanted to rush home after pur­chas­ing the book and stay up all night read­ing as much as I can. The other part of me didn’t want to start it, because I just didn’t want to face the end of the series I’ve grown to love so much. Ulti­mately it was the third part of me that won out in the end: The one that was too frickin’ tired to stay up after hav­ing had such a long day. (Hey, I’m no longer that spring chicken that can stay up all night … I need my “beauty” sleep, after all.)

Instead it was the next morn­ing that hubby opened up the book and again read me that first line:

“The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the nar­row, moon­lit lane.”

And once again, I’m hooked. And as we are both now caught up with the Harry Pot­ter series, we’re read­ing this book aloud. In many ways, read­ing it to each other invokes those same mem­o­ries I have of con­stantly read­ing while I was grow­ing up. To me, it’s such a fit­ting way to end the story of Harry Pot­ter, a boy who is now all grown up, in the same way we began read­ing his story. Together.

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