Portkey to Healing
I snuggled with my son under the striped blanket on his single bed and read aloud, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling…”
This book had been thrust into my hands fourteen years earlier by my father-in- law, Jack, a supernumerary judge and a voracious reader with a knack for matching the books he’d finished with new owners who’d delight in them. Looking at the cover art, a cartoonish illustration of a bewildered, bespectacled boy standing in front of red locomotive, I wanted to tease Jack about why he was passing it me instead of his colleagues at the courthouse. Instead, I thanked him and went into the den to start reading.
Like so many others, from grade-schoolers to Court of Queen’s Bench Justices, I was swept away by the series. My husband Sean was, too. We imagined ourselves reading the stories to our future children. We even made rules about it. Book before movie, of course. The tougher rule: No bingeing. We’d ration the series to one book a year, so that our children could experience growing up with Harry, the way the current generation was doing. Sean and I were newlyweds then.
Eight years later, our first and only child was born. We chose his name, Dashiell, based on Sean’s love of “The Maltese Falcon” and the “Thin Man” series. We considered the perils of the calling him Dash and hoped three things; first, that he’d be a fast enough runner to avoid ridicule at elementary school track meets; second, that he’d manage to avoid the difficult life and addiction struggles of his namesake, Dashiell Hammett; third, that he’d keep a low enough profile so the oxymoronic element of his name, “Dash Waite,” would go largely undetected.
The low-profile wish was immediately denied. In a twist of fate and civic census-taking, Dash happened to be the first baby born after midnight on the day that statisticians predicted his hometown of Calgary, Canada would hit a population of one million. At a press conference a few hours after his birth, our son was declared “Our Millionth Citizen” and white-hatted by Calgary’s mayor, who normally reserved that honour for visiting dignitaries.
Sean, who was both the proudest Calgarian and proudest new father I’ve ever known, deleted the faux Calgary Herald front page birth announcement he’d created, and handed out real newspapers instead. Our son, it seemed, was actually one in a million.
Six years after that, Sean’s job took our family to Singapore, and it was in our apartment there that Dash was tucked into bed with me. He’d been asking to start the Harry Potter series for a while, and was too excited to sleep anytime soon. I figured I’d read to him for about half an hour before I kissed him goodnight, but had to stop abruptly at the end of the first chapter. Maybe it was the long road to this anticipated moment with our only child. Maybe it was the fact that Jack, who’d died when Dash was just a baby, had given us the book. Maybe it was the power of the story itself. Whatever the reason, a wave of emotion hit, and I had to choke back tears when I read the toast in last line of Chapter One, “To Harry Potter, the boy who lived.”
Book-Character Day at school became easy. “I want to be Harry Potter!” Dash said, and I bought a skin-safe marker to draw the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. The marker eventually ran out of lightning bolts. When a business trip took Sean to London, he returned with the best-loved gift he ever gave his son: Real Harry Potter glasses; Wire-rimmed, beautiful and delicate. Too delicate to wear for play, too enticing to resist. It was quickly apparent why “Oculus Reparo” was a necessary spell. We used muggle tape.
Two years later, we transferred home to Calgary, and Dash started third grade at Strathcona Tweedsmuir School. Like Hogwarts, Strathcona had a house system. Dash was sorted into Dover and found kindred spirits in fellow Potter fans Kelly and Becca. The three friends started a Harry Potter club and spent time making wands, preparing spell books, and, with Sean’s help, photographing their canine mascot “Gryffindog.”
The club started with the three friends at a chess table over lunch, and expanded when they announced an open invitation to the elementary school, “Harry Potter Club meets on Fridays at recess in the Forever Woods.”
The following Friday, Dash came home on the verge of tears. “We ran out of wands,” he told me. “We thought fifty would be enough.”
That Hallowe’en, Dash opted to be the Dread Pirate Roberts, so his dad used the glasses and dressed as Harry Potter. The two of them ran around the yard, duelling, wand vs. sword until it was time to go trick-or-treating. I took photos, but even if I hadn’t, we’d never have forgotten that evening. It’s our last vivid memory of Sean. Two days later, he left for a business trip and suffered a fatal heart attack in Houston.
Dash stayed home for a few days to recover from the trauma. His first day back to school, it snowed. Hard as it was, I helped him find his parka and boots and sent him on the bus to Strathcona. His teachers and the school administration had been incredibly supportive, but Dash was a child re-entering the world of children, none of whom knew how to support a grieving peer. Or so I worried.
“Should I go get him?” I asked my mom, and she encouraged me to let it be. When I met Dash at the bus stop that afternoon, he was smiling, almost proud, holding out a large white box.
I took the heavy box from him and we hurried home, Dash bursting to show me what was inside. We opened it on the kitchen table and he took the items out one by one. A hooded black and scarlet Hogwarts robe; two authentic-looking wands; The Standard Book of Spells ; The Shield of Gryffindor, painted in scarlet and gold by his art teacher, Mr. O’ Brien.
‘Mister O’ had taken time and great care in painting the crest. The lion, rearing up on its hind legs looked fierce, a symbol of the courage and loyalty of Gryffindor House. The Strathcona Tweedsmuir School colours were represented on the back of the shield, the name “Dash” in navy blue, surrounded by the blue and green thumbprints of each of his classmates.
Dash received this gift with a combination of wonder and humility that evoked Harry Potter himself. I thought of the Sword of Gryffindor, how it only takes in that which makes it stronger. I could see my son drawing strength from the kindness, generosity and compassion of his school community.
The final gift in that magical white box was a parchment-like scroll, titled in a wizardly font: Lessons Learned from Harry Potter. My little boy smiled tearfully as he pointed out the last line:
The ones who love us never really leave us — Sirius Black
Dash took such comfort in those words that we changed the funeral program to include the quote, along with the picture of Harry Potter and the Dread Pirate Roberts standing together, smiling.
A few months later, I pulled Dash out of school to attend a Wordfest event with Emma Donoghue, author of Room. She writes for children now, and she mentioned that young adult book series are not simply a marketing ploy. Children, she said, have a deep psychological need to return to the fictional universes they love, to spend time with the characters, to journey with the heroes on their quests.
Listening to her speak, I realized that our stories don’t just entertain us, they form us. They weave into the fabric of our real lives. Dash might not be able to cast spells, but he has received magic. He may never face Voldemort, but he’s encountered a demon that killed his parent. Through it all, he’s had a touchstone, a role model who can summon love, courage and magic to survive, even when he’s overwhelmed.
When our family counsellor told me that Dash had all the markers of a child who would come through his trauma with resilience and empathy, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. All any parent wants to know is that their child has a chance to grow up okay. Hearing her opinion, and integrating it with my own understanding of Dash’s healing, I wanted to cheer. I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to thank everyone with a toast of my own.
“To love. To magic. To stories. And to J.K. Rowling, who helped my son become the boy who lived.”
