The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us

Originally written July 15, 2011

The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us.

This was the song that my iPod shuffled up to my car stereo minutes after I had watched the last Harry Potter film. I'd love to be all profound and say it was fate that this song came up because it seemed to capture perfectly everything I felt on that therapeutic drive home. But I must be truthful. This was the song, in all its perfect manifestation of the enigmatic feelings inside me, that came just after the right moment. Indeed, waiting in the stalled line of cars to exit the Warren Theatre parking lot was a song quite dissimilar to how I felt but welcomed, anyway, as an escape from the strangeness of my insides. Yes, the first song that graced my ears after perhaps the most pivotal point of my transition out of childhood was "Some Kind of Wonderful" by Grand Funk Railroad.

I won't lie. I funked out. Rolled the windows down, turned the volume up. Tapping out the beat on my steering wheel, I didn't give a second thought to the inappropriate abruptness my iPod had shoved upon me in that delicate moment. The jam carried me out of the brightly lit parking lot onto the dimly lamplit streets back home.

But then, after some silence, the shuffle found another tune. I was caught off-guard by the satisfaction the song evoked in me. I had not felt what I needed to sift through until Sufjan Stevens's mournful melody gently nudged me, reminding me of the great need to process what had just happened.

The story of Harry Potter was a part of me. It still is. But as my life continues to change, and my identity with it, Harry's part of me had to make a transition as well. It won't be buried, it doesn't need to hide, and it won't disappear. I cannot say that I do not and will not still need Hogwarts. I always will. And it will always be there, just as the story claims. But it will become something different to me. A part of my past with deep, resounding echos that will follow me forward. I can always go back to revisit. I never believe it is right to completely abandon the past. But now I ought to and will take what I have learned from this story, which is so very dear to me, and make my own with it. For this, I have not felt ready until this time. I'm still not sure that I am completely ready, but I have felt the shift.

Perhaps it is a providential connection that this story "all ends on July 15" and that my hybrid adolescent-adult life has been building toward some point of real transition for quite a while now. Either way, Harry's public life seems to have been intertwined with mine in this moment. I am certain that many others my age feel a similar connection and stand now at the same crossroads. I don't know exactly what the change will yield when I proceed from here - I can only be certain that change will happen. So I must take what I've gained from adolescence - the knowledge for which I've labored and that which has been graciously given me - and I must walk confidently forward with it.

I think only then will I fulfill the true intent of the story of Harry Potter - and of any story which has deeply impacted me. When I go forth and do, make, live. Then the story truly comes - and stays - alive forever.

"No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.” -JK Rowling