Skip to main content

Do you know where your children are?


My daughter was home this morning, a summer Saturday.

"Aren't you going to the Cape?" I asked. She and her boyfriend spend weekends with his parents at their Cape Cod cottage. Usually she leaves after work on Friday, but not always.

"I'm waiting for my Harry Potter book," she said.

I should have known. Joanna's been an avid reader of the series since its inauguration ten years ago when she was 13.

She'd preordered a copy of the new Harry Potter book from Amazon.com. Today was delivery day.

She's a reader. The current book beside her bed is "Einstein" by Walter Isaacson. In between books like this, she's read the entire Potter series several times over.

Her brother David was eight at Harry's debut, a third grader far more interested in sports than any book he'd met so far. When he settled down with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I thought a new era had begun; he'd discovered "reading for pleasure."

Not quite, but he found pleasure in Harry Potter. "I wish she'd hurry up," he once said of J. K. Rowling. "I'll be grown up by the time the next book is written."

At 18, he's sitting on the couch beside his girlfriend as I write. They're both reading their copies of Harry and the Deathly Hallows.

David and Jen went to Walmart last night after midnight. They waited in a crowd, wearing color-coded bracelets, to be granted the right to purchase two copies. Dave and Jen started reading in the wee morning hours.

Bruce and I sat in the back yard at sunset, and our neighbor wandered over for a chat. I told her Dave and Jen were in the house with Harry Potter.

"Sure!" she said with a wink. "Harry Potter? I was 18 once." Wink, wink.

"No, really," I said. "They are really reading!"

To the proverbial question, "It's 11 p.m. Do you know where your children are?" I can say, "Yes! One's reading Harry Potter in the living room with his girlfriend. My other is on the Cape with Harry."
Labels:

Comments

Heather said…
haha - have you read them? because they really are quite good - delightful and yet academic too.
July 22, 2007 at 11:06 AM
Janice Thomson said…
Enjoyed your closing lines Ruth :) Not so many these days know where their teenage children are. Reading is one of the many joys in my life too - nothing like a good book to set the creative juices on fire.
July 22, 2007 at 2:52 PM
Ruth L.~ said…
Heather, My son read us the first one in the car on our way to a ski vacation. I loved being read to, and found the story captivating. But on my own, I just can't read HP. Or maybe more truthfully, I don't really care to. Not sure why.

Janice, I can't think of any response that doesn't sound like I'm bragging about David and Joanna. They are good kids. Let's just say I love them. :>)
July 22, 2007 at 5:57 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cancer is the asshole~

Today was the first time in a long, long time that I’ve called Bruce an asshole—and the first time since his cancer diagnosis. How can you call some one with cancer an asshole? After all, cancer patients don’t feel good--they’re dealing with a deadly disease, there are all sorts of worries, frustrations, and side effects and changes to their bodies, quality of life issues... and all the other little quirky symptoms that I only find out about about when Bruce tells his nurse. I’m pretty patient and understanding by nature, and all the more so now when he vents the inevitable “ cancer anger ” a little (or a lot). Today he got impatient and snippy, frustrated that we couldn’t merge our iCalendars—he hates when technology goes awry. Who doesn't? For him, it's one more thing out of his control. He started to tell me what I’d done incorrectly in the attempt to merge, and kept cutting me off when I tried to show him what I did...which, by the way, was corre...
13 comments
Read more

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We...
37 comments
Read more

A Continuum: the sands of time...

Time is like a handful of sand, the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers. Anonymous My 20’s: That runner’s high! I love it! I feel like my feet are six inches above the pavement and I could just keep running and running forever. I stretch my runs longer and longer for pure pleasure until I just have to turn back--reluctantly. I’m empowered and kind of in awe of my energy. My 30s: My pregnancy decade. Three kids. I jog behind a stroller with the firstborn; walk with a toddler while pushing a stroller with the second born; walk slowly with my third, stopping so he can drop pebbles down the drain or pat the doggie.   I go on occasional walks or slow jogs on weekends or days when my husband is home with all three kids. But I often choose to nap. My 40s: My oldest babysits for thirty minutes so I can go out for a walk. I call it my “by-by walk.” “Mommy’s going for a by-by walk,” I say to soothe my youngest, who c...
1 comment
Read more