I’ve been waiting more than seven years for what happened last night. Before putting my son to bed, I opened up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (the new illustrated edition) and read him the first chapter about The Boy Who Lived. 

It was the fulfillment of dreams.

Way back when I was a “young married,” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have children. Scratch that: I was dead terrified of having children. I’d never been a baby person. I couldn’t picture myself as a mother. I’d barely figured out how to take care of myself, let alone another person. There were endless reasons why having a baby wasn’t a good idea.

I finally identified the source of my fear. (I wrote the story of how that happened in my essay The Birth of Fear, published by Hippocampus in 2017). The idea of having a baby became a little more possible, a little more real. But I still couldn’t picture myself as a mother. What kind of mother would I be?

Then someone– I wish I could remember who– gave me a piece of advice. “Try to picture yourself doing something with your child,” they said.

I tried. Playing an instrument? Baking cookies? Running around a playground? I couldn’t get an image of anything.

And then one day, it just popped into my head. I saw myself snuggled on a bed with a curled-up child, reading to him. Not just any book. Harry Potter.

Suddenly, I had a glimpse of what kind of mother I’d be. A snuggling mother. A reading mother. A mother sharing the world of stories and magic with her child. Just like that, I felt ready to have a baby.

Last night, I finally stepped into that picture. Originally, I’d decided to wait for Harry Potter until Edwin turned seven. I imagined us reading the first chapter on the eve of his seventh birthday. But he’s six now, and I think he’s ready (not for the whole series, but maybe for the first three, this year). We recently listened to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on audiobook, and he was enthralled by the magic. And he wanted a Harry Potter Lego set for Christmas– the Whomping Willow one. I thought, why not strike while the iron was hot? I bought him the illustrated edition for Christmas, and last night, the night after Christmas, we started reading.

I wish I could do the voices as well as Jim Dale. But I did my best. And I think my reading interjected all my love for the story, and all the magic of the event, that I could muster.

I can’t wait to read chapter two today.