The Boy Who Lived

I first encountered the world of Harry Potter by eavesdropping on a friend reading the first book to her young daughter. My friend was a good narrator, and her daughter was clearly enthralled. I too got caught up in the overheard snippet of story about a resilient hero, the orphan hailed as "the Boy Who Lived."

But even more, I was drawn to the intimacy of their tableau -- parent and child leaning in toward one another, mirroring one another's facial expressions in response to the text, pausing to share meaningful looks, pulling this cozy world of words around them like a blanket fort.

At that time I was childless. My new husband was finishing seminary, I was starting a new job, and then we were settling into a new apartment in a new town. When the time was right, we told one another.

And then, suddenly, the time was right. One day we said yes, and soon became the parents of a bouncing 13-year-old boy. Bouncing with natural exuberance supercharged by ADHD.

One great thing about adopting a teenager is getting to skip the stinky diapers and potty training stage. On the other hand, adoption tends to come with its own kinds of mess. Maurice was bruised from years of bouncing from one foster/group home to another. The adoption agency had solemnly handed us a thick, scary file documenting his history. The reports and records of his hardships stacked up like weights in an exercise machine, impossibly heavy for anyone to bear.

But a social worker had said to us, "I think this is your kid!" And she was right.

My husband and I got to know the boy behind the case file as we leaned into being a family. One challenge came in the form of his significant learning disabilities. Reading for him was arduous and avoided whenever possible. He had no concept of reading for pleasure. Since I ate, breathed and dreamed books when I was his age, it was difficult (in those pre-smartphone days) for me to imagine a reading-less life.

Another challenge was bedtime. Issues around sleep are common for kids from backgrounds of trauma, and getting him to settle down every night was like trying to tuck in a helium balloon. I got exhausted long before he did.

Then one day he brought home a book from the school library -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was then a popular topic with his classmates, and I think he wanted to go with the flow. He asked me to read it to him.

So that evening, after Maurice finally settled into bed, I opened the book. Privately, I doubted that this would last. Maurice didn't strike me as the wizard hat type. Once he figured out what the book was about, he'd probably get bored and return to his regularly scheduled bedtime antics.

But after I read the first few pages, it hit me that he was unusually quiet. Not even a squirm. I glanced up to see his face serene with attention. He was -- dare I say it? -- spellbound. I kept reading.

When I got to an exciting spot, I closed the book.

Maurice protested that he needed to know what happened next. But I calmly asserted it was time for lights out, and we could continue reading the next night.

I've made many (many) mistakes as a parent, but that move, I have to say, was genius. Thank you, Scheherazade.

A while later, noting that Maurice's room was suspiciously silent, I peeked in to check on him. He was hunched over the page, flashlight in hand. Word by laborious word, he was sounding out the story.

That's when Harry Potter moved in with us. Because anything that got my kid to read by flashlight was welcome in my book.

So this became our nightly ritual. Page by page, year after year, we worked our way through all seven books in the Harry Potter series, often stopping at a cliffhanger. Sometimes Maurice would read ahead but he usually asked me to re-read those sections for better understanding. When my younger son became a toddler, he started flopping on the bed beside his big brother to listen. We dressed up and joined the throng for the midnight release of book #5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Once, waiting for a flight on a family trip, we realized that we hadn't packed our current book. So I scurried to find a copy in the airport gift shop.

My husband supported, but did not share, our Potter passion. It was me and Maurice, mother and son, hanging out in our magical world of words. Our unique bond.

In the gaps between Harry Potter books, we filled in with Matt Christopher's sports novels and Holes and Maniac Magee. Then Maurice asked me to read him the book, A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive, by Dave Pelzer.

This memoir was difficult for me to read, especially aloud to Maurice. The author lay out in horrifying detail the physical and emotional abuse that he suffered as a child. In the sequel, The Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family, he described the stigma and hardships he faced as a rebellious, lonely teen in foster care. Dave Pelzer had been in and out of five foster homes. Maurice had that number beat.

It began to sink in for me why Maurice felt so connected to Harry Potter. I enjoyed the books as pure fantasy, but for my son they held reflections of his own lived experience. Like Harry, Maurice had been separated from parents he barely remembered, for reasons he didn't understand, and he struggled to piece together the fragments of his past. Like Harry, Maurice had been sent to live in homes where he didn't feel he really belonged, and with people who failed to nurture and protect him. An incident with one exasperated foster parent even gave Maurice a scar on his forehead -- not the iconic lightning shape, but still.

And like Harry Potter, Maurice sometimes fell into rages, or made rash decisions. Sometimes, acting out of deeply ingrained mistrust, he pushed away the people who cared for him most. Gradually, Harry learned that he didn't have to face his challenges alone. Even when his found family didn't understand or know how to help him, they always stood by him. I'd like to think that Maurice has had this going for him as well.

Maurice's weighty case file described his precarious beginnings. He was born four months premature, weighing only around three pounds. The hospital was his home for months, and he went through multiple surgeries and procedures before his first birthday. His survival was miraculous.

Maurice was the boy who lived.

The final chapter in our Harry Potter saga was memorable for being anticlimactic. We were traveling to visit my family, and our goal was to finish book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, during the long drive. Maurice and I had made a pact that we would not watch any Harry Potter movie until we had completed the corresponding book. We had plans to see the last Deathly Hallows movie on our visit, so it was a race of miles vs. pages.

On the last leg of our drive, it was dark and bumpy and my voice was giving out. I read faster and faster, and I doubt either of us really followed the twists and turns of the finale. But we got through. I closed the book just in time to turn into the driveway. And that was that.

Not long after this, our son went through a difficult patch. Young adulthood can be an especially perilous passage for those whose childhood trauma is still nipping at their heels. It was painful for us to watch. We loved him, but we could no longer shelter him. Like Harry Potter -- and just about every other protagonist -- Maurice had his time of wandering in the wilderness.

During this period we all wrestled with the messy complexity of relationships. Some established assumptions about who we were to one another went the way of our former cozy routines. This theme too found reflections in the Harry Potter series. Individuals long despised as villains -- say, a professor, or a blood relative -- turn out to have their own surprising story, forcing a reassessment of their character. And people assumed to be the good guys -- say, a headmaster, or adoptive parents -- are discovered to have hidden flaws and subconscious motives that sometimes hurt the people they purport to help.

Hatred is never pure. Love and loyalty are rarely unalloyed. It's hard to figure it all out when your perspective keeps shifting. But without that growth, there wouldn't be much of a story -- right?

Harry Potter hasn't shown up in our house for a while. Maurice is now grown up, living his life, and we are still close. His books are packed away in the basement along with his birthday cards, Special Olympics ribbons, high school yearbook and other memorabilia of his youth. He is resilient, he is loyal, he is protective, he is exuberant. He occasionally watches Harry Potter movies on our streaming account.

There's no neat place in the story of a family where you can close the cover and sigh, "Well, that's done." Who knows where Maurice's story -- and mine -- will take us? After all, even the Harry Potter series got a sequel. Maybe, when we get to an exciting part, I'll let you know what happens next.

Note: This piece was written with the gracious consent of my son, Maurice. Thank you for reading our story.