Sorting Life Out by Online Quizzes and Major Surgery

by Gracie Julian

He waves his wand and shouts expelliarmus from the top of the stairs as I walk in. I hear a crash as a book goes flying from his mom’s hand through the air. “Mom, be nice to the books!” he reminds her with a tone of excited authority – ironic coming from an eight-year-old to his author mom.

“Woah!” I exclaim with mock amazement. “Looks like somebody’s been practicing their magic skills.” I was not expecting my entrance to be this dramatic. I had planned on asking my neighbor about what it’s like having surgery as a kid, but it looks like he has other plans.

The light coming from the tip of his battery-powered wand draws nearer to the notebook in my hand, and I prepare for my legal pad’s temporary fate.

“Expelliarmus!” he bellows with a wide grin and tightly closed eyes.

I stumble backwards and drop my notebook gingerly onto a nearby sofa. “Oh man, you got me!” I tell the sandy-blonde, mop-haired boy.

“Hey, Rowan,” his mom starts. “Remember how Gracie asked if she could talk to you today?” He nods, eyes fixed on his replica of Harry Potter’s wand. “Do you want to sit outside and talk to her now?”

He jerks his head up and looks in my direction. “Yeah!” he smiles, rushing down the rest of the stairs. Then, just as suddenly as he had looked up, he stops. “Wait!” he shouts, spinning around and sprinting back up the stairs. I look to his mom, registering a mix of pride and desperation dancing across her face. It’s the look of an adoring, yet drained, parent of a second-grader.

On this day two years ago, Rowan was wheeled away from his family to close the hole in his heart.

In the seconds the Rowan is preoccupied, I take the chance to check in with his mom. “So I was thinking about asking about Heart Day,” I say. “What do you think?” I had seen her “1 Year Ago” post on Facebook about the first anniversary of her son’s surgery on my walk over to their house and remembered her essays about her experience in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Now I want his perspective.

“Go for it!” she shrugs as Rowan’s quick footsteps near the top of the stairs. “I don’t know what he’ll say, but you can totally try.” I intend to ask more, but I’m interrupted by Rowan all but crashing down the stairs accompanied by a plastic wrapped pink and blue poster. This has been a theme throughout my friendship with the Ristau family. It’s always been a straddle between connecting or caring first.

“I’m ready!” he howls as he grabs the handle to the front door. His mom immediately lunges for the two bouncing dogs awaiting their escape, and Rowan and I slip out onto the pebbly threshold. He delicately leans the poster against the facade and sits down on the red wire chair. “So, what are we doing?” he asks, straight to the point.

I take a seat in the other thatched chair and take out my phone. “I thought I could ask you some questions, Rowan.”

“What’s that for?” he asks distractedly, eyeing my phone.

“Do you wanna make a movie? I thought we could record a video while we talk.” I watch the objection slowly spreading across his face. “Or not!”I add hastily, trying not to end things before they begin. “Can you tell me about your poster instead?” The reluctance dissolves into a dreamy kind of delight. This is going to go well.

Rowan’s spell chart

Rowan’s practice spells

“Well, you know Harry Potter, right?” he begins, not waiting for my response. “My dad and I were at the comic book store and we saw this and I got it.” He traces his finger along the poster and then points to me, reciting a spell from the diagram on the blue background. “Expelliarmus!” I dramatically tremble in my chair as he continues his story. “I’ve been studying them. I can show you if you want. I’m on the third book right now.” He reaches over to my notebook and pencil with an inquisitive look in his eye.

I nod, relinquishing the last of my control over the conversation. “Go ahead!”

He starts to draw. Looking closely at his poster, he copies down the shape of expelliarmus and carefully writes its name along the line.

“So it seems like you might like Harry Potter,” I observe as he moves on to the triangular shape of lumos. “But only just a little bit,” I add, hoping to break his concentration and continue our conversation. He’s done alohomora and revelio now, and I recognize my chance to jump in. “Hey,” I say as I point at his drawing of revelio. “‘R’ for Rowan!”

“Yeah, I guess,” he says as he looks up.

“Rowan, do you know what day today is?” I ask, hoping to start talking about his thoughts on his heart.

“Uh…” he pauses. “I think it might be… the eleventh?” His voice goes up at the end, unsure of his accuracy.

I am surprised that a second-grader can think of the specific date before registering the anniversary of a major life event. As someone who had surgery as a kid, I can tell you every single thing about the day of my surgery. I am taken aback by his odd specificity. I check my phone to see if he’s right, losing hope that we would be talking about anything I had planned.

“Um, yeah, the eleventh. Wow!”

Confusion clouds his eyes as he meets mine. He puts down his pencil. “Why are you surprised?” He seems almost offended that I would expect anything less than brilliance.

“Oh, I was just expecting you to say something else.”

“Well,” he says with an air of restraint. He’s trying to subtly guide the conversation, and I go along with it. “We could maybe talk more about Harry Potter. How does that sound?”

For an eight-year-old who spends most of his time with other eight-year-olds, I am impressed by his mature handling of our discussion. He reminds me of me.

We both grew up, separated by years and a few front doors, as only children with two parents and a couple of dogs. We both glided through the classroom and would have rather been at home reading. When I was little, my parents taught me a song to remember my address, and when I began babysitting him, I changed the street number and taught it to him. And we also both happened to have big problems with our bodies that needed big surgeries to fix them.

I decide not to push him to talk. I know him well, but only as the kid who schools me at “Magic: the Gathering” and talks me through his numerous Lego sets. The babysitter isn’t usually the person a kid talks to about their deepest fears and sense of mortality. I guess I’m just caught up on our uncanny kinship. I’ve always wanted to talk to someone like me.

When I was fifteen, I had to uncurl my spine. It was squishing my heart and holding me back. When he was six, he had to sew up his heart. It was too loud, too big, too fierce. I know I was scared, and I had nine years on him. What was it like to leave the only home he’s ever known and arrive at a blank room with windows looking out at a confusing city, knowing that something scary but necessary is about to happen? I guess I did that too - while he looked out on the hills and rivers of Portland, a city mostly foreign to him, I left home for the towering skyline of Manhattan.

He reaches for the pencil he had put down, noticing my lack of participation and registering it as time to go back to drawing. He pulls me out of my memories.

“Oh yeah, we can totally talk about Harry Potter!” I spit out, frazzled. “Do you know what house you’re in?”

“Gryffindor, just like Harry!”

“Well have you taken a sorting quiz yet?”

His eyes widen. “No,” he says with the forced control of extreme excitement. I pull out my phone, and this time, he’s excited. We begin to go through the questions.

“Ok, here’s the first question: ‘What was your childhood like?’” He chooses the answer ‘Overall it was positive. I loved my family a great deal, even though we had our struggles.’ I’m curious about what he defines as struggles, but before I can ask, he interrupts me and asks for the next question. Maybe his infatuation with books and Harry Potter is a way for him to channel his big emotions about his own health into something positive. I definitely felt that way while dealing with my own challenges.

“What’s next?” His excitement is radiating.

“Ok, it says ‘Does your self image match up with the way others view you?’ Do you know what self image is?”

“Yep.” The response is sure, reminding me of his reaction to my surprise at his knowledge of the date. “I want that one.” He points to the answer ‘People tend to think that I’m very in control or powerful, but I often feel lost and confused.’ This quiz is getting very deep, very fast. I wish I could ask him more, but we are on a mission to get sorted.

“All right, next question. ‘Someone asks you about your past. How do you respond?’” Based on my experience with him today, I expect him to pick the ‘I don’t really want to talk about it’ answer, but instead, he picks ‘I mean it’s pretty boring, but I tell them.’ He will never stop surprising me.

After actually getting sorted into Gryffindor, his mom walks out and reminds him that it’s time for baseball. He jumps up and runs to tell her about his sorting success. I can imagine him jumping and running wherever he wants, and I know he can, too. I’m not sure if he ever doubted that, but now he doesn’t have to.

It can be scary leaving home, but for me and Rowan, it changed our lives. We might not have known it at the time, but our bravery and that of those around us made it possible for us to return home.