Potter's mirror of desire brings out hopes, dreams
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
I've been reading Harry Potter slowly, not because it isn't good, but because it is. Because it isn't just one great, compelling, I-can't-put-this-down story, but a series of great stories, each chapter a complete tale. It's nice not to rush through the words. It's fun just to read.
Fun? It's a kid's word isn't it? Adults don't have fun. They have weekends off. They take vacations. They go to movies. They walk, run, ski, read biographies.
"Was it fun?" That's not what we ask each other. We say, "How was the movie? The snow? The weekend? Did you have a good time?"
Harry Potter is more than a good time. It's Saturday afternoon at a double feature, candy and popcorn in your lap, followed by a Saturday night sleepover at your best friend's. It's total childhood - magic potions, secret passageways, hidden doors, flying brooms and cloaks that can make you invisible. No wonder adults can't get enough of it.
"The Mirror of Erised," Chapter 12 in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is my favorite mini-tale so far. Harry, who is an orphan, discovers a mirror in which he sees not just a reflection of himself, but an entire family he's never known.
"Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?
"They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees - Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life."
And Harry was bewitched and obsessed and compelled to come back to the mirror.
"The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness."
Erised, of course, as every child reader knows, is desire spelled backward. The Mirror of Erised is a mirror of desire showing those who peer into it not things as they are but the things they most want.
Harry doesn't know this though. He sees his family in the mirror and runs to get his best friend. But Harry's friend doesn't see what Harry sees in the glass. Instead, he sees himself transfigured, big and popular like his older brothers because that's what he longs to be.
"It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live," a wizard tells Harry, warning him that the mirror gives neither truth nor knowledge. "Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."
The chapter ends. The fantasy is dissolved. A lesson is learned. But the idea lingers.
And if there were a Mirror of Erised. What would we see? What would be our heart's desire?
My friend Beth says it would be to see her children all young and all at home and her mother alive and in her kitchen with her.
Anne says it would be to see her daughter who died when she was 11. "I'd like to see that she's OK." Tom says he'd look into the mirror and see a wonderful future for his children, their health and happiness. Jeannie would see a little house in the middle of the woods and everything paid for, "so I would never have to leave."
Linda would see "my whole entire family living happily ever after." Gil Phinn, a priest, says he'd see a healthier, happier and holier Gil Phinn. My daughter Lauren says, "I'd see a size 2 and a week where I didn't misspell anyone's name."
What would I see? I don't know. I play with the idea. Some days, I think I would see myself in the old green chair, my children all small and beside me. Some days, I think I would see an even older green chair, my mother in it, and me beside her. But some days, I think I would see now on holidays when all the kitchen chairs are filled with the adults my children have become.
I ask Shiloh, who is 10, what she'd see in the mirror and without a pause, she says, "I'd see me dancing."
And I smile because the wizard who counseled Harry also told Harry this: "The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is."
Shiloh exactly as she is 10 and happy and dancing.
