I Ate the Frog

I confess that my sweet craving got the better of me.

Over three days, I ate the Harry Potter Chocolate Frog.

(It looked much better than it tasted.)

But the real reward lay inside that beautiful little box, under the frog: a Helga Hufflepuff 3-D card.

Suddenly, my childhood fascination with such cardboard panels rushed back. I studied the card, slanting it this way and that, in light and out, up close and far away, and while I know the trick has something to do with the coating and the ridges and the pigment, I am as enchanted as I was at four or five when I saw the first of these magical visual tricks.

Please: don't tell me how it's done. I considered searching online and decided against it. I still need to believe in magic.

Care Packages

Just when my sprained ankle/foot began to get the best of me, I enjoyed three lovely surprises:

1. an unexpected gift of real New Orleans coffee, wrapped beautifully as always by my friend S in a kitchen tea towel and ribbon, which also serves to secure the ice pack to my foot;

2. a Gryffyndor scarf and chocolate frog from Harry Potter World;

3. hand-delivered by my one and only blood nephew, whom I had not seen since early December.

Even my swollen toes were well pleased, although you can't tell from their sad bruising.

Eaters and the Eaten

1.
The Easter Bunny brought my bibliophiliac 9-year-old great-niece Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Before now I have been the HP Giver, but somehow the Bunny decided it was time for E to move on into the darker realm. By this afternoon she was on page 138. For her, words are like Lay's potato chips: she can't eat just one.

2.
Dragonflies and damselflies don't eat just one either. If it flies, creeps, crawls, or swims, the Odonate will grab it and ingest it faster than you say Ick! Believe me, I know. I have watched them eat on the fly and on the plant, plucking other critters out of the air, masticating, and swallowing them barely before grabbing another. The first time I saw a Blue Corporal eat a damselfly (of uncertain kind), I didn't even understand what I was seeing. I thought the dragonfly was injured because it  flew and fought with the damselfly so clumsily. The female Eastern Pondhawk, on the other hand, snagged a slightly smaller Calico Pennant with ease, flew it to a bush, and proceeded to tear into the head with what can only be called relish. Like E, the Pondhawk is voracious.

3.
This afternoon, the library filled with undergraduates expert in sugar consumption. They tore into Edible Books, eating The Three Little Pigs, The Lord of the Fries, The 101 Dalmatians, and How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You  with fingers slathered in icing. 

4.
From "Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

5.
I revel in words, words, words, and they are good.

Perfect Gifts

Scary things of girlhood -- bugs, spiders, ghosts, sci-fi shows on TV -- no longer fill me with fear.  I can watch anything on television without lacing my fingers over my eyes, and books don't keep me awake at night, listening for the telltale whoosh of bat wings at my window.  Had I come home to this praying mantis in childhood, I would have frozen and waited for an adult to take care of it.  Instead, today, I threw my things on the porch, pulled out my camera, and started snapping.  I felt welcomed by a perfect gift.

Welcome, too, is the special thrill of giving someone the thing she most wants for her birthday, knowing that she will tremble and gasp at the Dementors, hold the covers tight during Black Arts, and widen her eyes at the Shreiking Shack.  Her stomach will drop and skin goosepimple.  She may even cry just a little or whimper.  But E already knows that bugs are beautiful and words live only in imagination. 

The world as it is has already brought her grandmother's death, and the world as it is imagined will also bring the loss of fictional loved ones, but E lives in and loves both worlds, perfect gifts as they are.