I had a great day with my family today--the sun is finally shining again, so we headed out to the zoo and surrounding park. Part of the reason for this trip was to take pictures my son needs for his next science project, and part of the reason was to spend some time together as a family, which we don't get to do often enough these days.
My daughter is fifteen. She has a pretty terrific boyfriend, and he's easily become part of the family. We even added him to our zoo membership, so he could come with us whenever we head across town. Today, though, he couldn't go. I was a little pleased with this, since it meant my daughter would actually be interacting with us for a change, but I knew we were also running the risk of dealing with Surly Girl all day.
I adore my daughter. She's smart and beautiful and friendly and practical, all the things you'd want your daughter to be. From the time she was a tiny girl, with a head full of Shirley Temple curls and a 100-watt smile, she just drew people to her. Complete strangers would stop us on the street or in an airport and strike up a conversation with a two-year-old. Once, when we were in Memphis--Jordan was not quite three at the time--an elderly woman walking slowly past us on the sidewalk stopped and openly stared at my daughter. "My gracious," she said. "You really are a little angel." Then she asked if it would be all right to touch my daughter's hair. Jordan was used to the attention, so she didn't mind. I said it was fine. The woman fingered Jordan's curls, then smiled and thanked us both before she went on her way.
I'm pretty shameless in my admiration of Jordan. And while I know I'm supposed to feel this way--she's my kid, after all--I know many people who feel the same way about her without being compelled to. It's hard not to like her, honestly. (Well, except for the few girls at school who seem to hate her precisely because of best qualities. Those people, I tell her, aren't worth being concerned about, and most of the time she believes this.)
I know my daughter is aware of how much I like her, in addition to loving her. But I think that's what makes it really difficult for her not to boss her little brother around--all the things I've always praised in her are qualities her brother doesn't possess. In addition to the age difference between them--which always seems to make the older kid feel entitled to direct the younger one--Andrew is different from his sister in just about every way. He's shy and introverted around people other than his family, not at all social. His teachers are always alarmed by the fact that he doesn't talk to other people in class, or not unless they speak to him first, and I have to reassure them that he talks all the time at home. He has ADHD, the inattentive variety, which makes it hard for him to focus at school. He takes medication that makes this a little easier, and now that we have an IEP in place, guaranteeing some extra follow-up from his teachers, his grades have improved to the point that he isn't failing any of his classes--but A's are rare for him. B's are an accomplishment, and C's are the goal. Still, he's in Advanced Placement classes and his teachers often say that he's obviously very bright. He just can't express that in the ways they would like.
Although he doesn't have an official diagnosis, I've done enough research to understand that my son also has Asperger Syndrome (which was recently placed under the autism spectrum.) He doesn't seek out friendships, doesn't understand body language or social cues, and takes figurative language very literally--when he was little, I learned to be very careful about saying things like "My head is going to explode if you keep making that noise," because he really believed that would happen. He develops an intense interest in odd subjects (when he was little, he was obsessed with decoding circle/slash signs; these days, he can tell you anything you might want to know about hurricanes) and really needs to stick with a routine. He gets very upset when his life is off schedule, when he can't watch his favorite TV programs at the appointed time.
I adore my son, too. He has a well-developed sense of humor, which he expresses in the comic strip he's been drawing for several years now, and he's very smart--he just isn't able to demonstrate that at school. He's much more like his dad and I than his sister is. We're shy and introverted too; neither of us has a large friend network, and that doesn't bother us. For the most part, it doesn't seem to bother Andrew either. Once in awhile he talks about wishing he had some friends, and that's when my heart breaks for him, but more often he talks about being glad he doesn't have to deal with the kind of drama Jordan deals with on a regular basis.
Today the two of them were getting along pretty well, as they often do. But I couldn't help notice that Jordan spends a lot of time telling Andrew what to do, and he rarely ever questions what she says--he just does it. I might have just written this off to sibling behavior if not for the fact that, earlier this week, Andrew showed me a paper he'd written about Jordan for his English class. The assignment was to write about an important person in your life, and Andrew wrote about how he looks up to Jordan because she's so good at everything. A general theme of the essay was "She's better than me at everything." (Except at video games, where he acknowledged an ability to beat her occasionally.)
I know Andrew hears us telling Jordan "Good job" pretty often. I know he hears her telling us that she earned a First Division rating in band, or an A on the Spanish test that everyone else failed. It wouldn't be fair to her if we acted like these things don't matter, because they do. She deserves to be proud of her accomplishments. She works hard for what she gets--she practices her flute for competitions, studies for exams. I point this out to Andrew whenever he complains that she gets everything she wants.
So today I started wondering how I can let Andrew know that we love him because he's different from Jordan, not in spite of that fact. I've learned so much from being his mother. I've learned enormous patience; I've learned to swallow my pride and ask for help when I can't solve a problem myself, which is really hard for me; I've learned that, sometimes, problems can be addressed but not solved. I've also learned that, sometimes, a C is reason enough to celebrate. That's not an easy lesson to learn when you're a person who always did well in school--a person who earned a Ph.D. because school was the only place you ever felt you really fit in.
Watching Andrew struggle has made me a better professor, too, because I've learned there are many reasons why students don't do well in class, and some of those reasons aren't entirely under the student's control. I've learned that giving those students a break often makes them feel worse, not better. It makes them feel like you don't have faith in their ability to do what you've asked everyone else to do.
Earlier today I was reading a friend's blog. Her son was recently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but she's encouraged that he might improve in the long run because he wasn't a "weird" kid--he didn't, for instance, talk to himself or obsess over odd hobbies and subjects. Reading that stopped me cold, because Andrew is that "weird" kid. He always has been. I know schizophrenia affects young men more often than women, and mental illness runs in our family, on both sides. So, once again, the odds are against him.
But I'm determined to love that boy in every way I know how--supporting him, giving him a push now and then, expecting nothing less from him than I do from his sister. I expect him to do his very best, no matter where that leads him. And I'm determined to teach my daughter how to love her brother this way, too--for who he is, not who she thinks he should be.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Endless Possibility
I had lunch with a former student today. M. had agreed to visit my Senior Thesis class and do her thesis presentation for them, so they could hear what a really good presentation sounds like, and then to talk about her process for completing that project. She was smart and articulate and encouraging to the students who came to hear her, just as I'd hoped she would be. I took her out for Chinese food afterward--as a gesture of appreciation, but also because I enjoy her company. We've met for coffee every few months since her graduation.
This afternoon, we spent most of our time talking about her recent break-up with the man she's been dating since she was 17. It's tempting to think of that as a childhood romance, but the relationship lasted five years--longer than a lot of marriages these days (five times longer than my brother's first marriage, actually.) She'd been struggling to end that relationship for some time, but it's tricky when you're living with the person you don't want to be with anymore. And then there's the matter of guilt: women are not programmed to think about themselves. We're taught to be careful of others' feelings, not to make trouble, to be self-sacrificing above all else. It was really difficult for M. to take a moment and think about herself.
But she did it, and I'm proud of her, and I told her so. Rather than doing the easy thing, she did the difficult thing on behalf of herself. And now she's making a plan for taking the next steps toward the future she wants to have: finding her own place to live, researching grad schools, taking the GRE. It's scary to be completely responsible for yourself, but it's exhilarating too.
I spent much of this afternoon thinking about my first year in grad school. I moved to Kansas from Idaho without knowing a soul; I drove cross-country in my little Chevette packed full of my wordly possessions. (I still marvel at the fact that I made it across the Rockies in a little economy car that went 40 mph on those inclines.) I did this because I had a fellowship that offered me a chunk of money when I arrived and a teaching assistantship that would pay the bills while I was in school. I was homesick, of course, but I'd expected that; I was homesick when I went away to college, too, and I was only six hours from home then. For the first six months of grad school, I consoled myself with the thought that if it got too bad, I could drive straight home in 24 hours. By this time tomorrow, I could be sitting in my parents' living room became my mantra.
I thought about dropping out of grad school many, many times. But, for whatever reason, I didn't. I made new friends, found that I really enjoyed my graduate classes (once I got through the first semester, during which I was stuck in the courses that had low enrollments--meaning, in other words, the least popular classes with the most difficult professors.) Eventually, I connected with a group of people I really loved, many of whom are still my friends today.
Before I got to that point, though, there were moments of real difficulty. There were language barriers and culture clashes--yes, even between Kansas and Idaho. The student union building was the Union, not the SUB--the first time I asked someone for directions to the SUB, I got a look that suggested I was potentially dangerous. I'd never heard locusts in the trees before, and when I asked my new roommate "What is making all that noise?" I got a blank look in return. She didn't even hear what was absolutely deafening to me.
I didn't know that, in the Midwest, it stays hot all night long. The first time I opened my windows at 10 o'clock, expecting a cool breeze, I was stunned to find that it still felt like high noon. I didn't know that walking outside in the rain without an umbrella was going to leave me soaked to the skin in a matter of minutes. In Idaho, it can rain for three days without accumulating a full inch.
A lot of the time, I felt like I was existing on a separate plane, all by myself. There were new brand names to learn at the grocery store and new stores to navigate. There were tornado sirens tested at noon once a week. The list of things I had to learn keeps on going, but the point is that learning it all at once, all alone, was overwhelming.
And exciting, too.
I sympathize with M.'s conflicted feelings of excitement and anxiety. I've been there; I know how it feels to have your whole life in your own two hands, to be solely responsible for yourself. But I told her today to enjoy that feeling: "This is the only time in your life when you'll be able to do anything you want," I said. "You aren't tied to a mortgage or a career or a marriage--anything is possible. That's a wonderful thing."
It's scary to look into that horizon of endless possibility. But if you're never brave enough to take in that vista, I have to believe you're going to wonder what might have been.
This afternoon, we spent most of our time talking about her recent break-up with the man she's been dating since she was 17. It's tempting to think of that as a childhood romance, but the relationship lasted five years--longer than a lot of marriages these days (five times longer than my brother's first marriage, actually.) She'd been struggling to end that relationship for some time, but it's tricky when you're living with the person you don't want to be with anymore. And then there's the matter of guilt: women are not programmed to think about themselves. We're taught to be careful of others' feelings, not to make trouble, to be self-sacrificing above all else. It was really difficult for M. to take a moment and think about herself.
But she did it, and I'm proud of her, and I told her so. Rather than doing the easy thing, she did the difficult thing on behalf of herself. And now she's making a plan for taking the next steps toward the future she wants to have: finding her own place to live, researching grad schools, taking the GRE. It's scary to be completely responsible for yourself, but it's exhilarating too.
I spent much of this afternoon thinking about my first year in grad school. I moved to Kansas from Idaho without knowing a soul; I drove cross-country in my little Chevette packed full of my wordly possessions. (I still marvel at the fact that I made it across the Rockies in a little economy car that went 40 mph on those inclines.) I did this because I had a fellowship that offered me a chunk of money when I arrived and a teaching assistantship that would pay the bills while I was in school. I was homesick, of course, but I'd expected that; I was homesick when I went away to college, too, and I was only six hours from home then. For the first six months of grad school, I consoled myself with the thought that if it got too bad, I could drive straight home in 24 hours. By this time tomorrow, I could be sitting in my parents' living room became my mantra.
I thought about dropping out of grad school many, many times. But, for whatever reason, I didn't. I made new friends, found that I really enjoyed my graduate classes (once I got through the first semester, during which I was stuck in the courses that had low enrollments--meaning, in other words, the least popular classes with the most difficult professors.) Eventually, I connected with a group of people I really loved, many of whom are still my friends today.
Before I got to that point, though, there were moments of real difficulty. There were language barriers and culture clashes--yes, even between Kansas and Idaho. The student union building was the Union, not the SUB--the first time I asked someone for directions to the SUB, I got a look that suggested I was potentially dangerous. I'd never heard locusts in the trees before, and when I asked my new roommate "What is making all that noise?" I got a blank look in return. She didn't even hear what was absolutely deafening to me.
I didn't know that, in the Midwest, it stays hot all night long. The first time I opened my windows at 10 o'clock, expecting a cool breeze, I was stunned to find that it still felt like high noon. I didn't know that walking outside in the rain without an umbrella was going to leave me soaked to the skin in a matter of minutes. In Idaho, it can rain for three days without accumulating a full inch.
A lot of the time, I felt like I was existing on a separate plane, all by myself. There were new brand names to learn at the grocery store and new stores to navigate. There were tornado sirens tested at noon once a week. The list of things I had to learn keeps on going, but the point is that learning it all at once, all alone, was overwhelming.
And exciting, too.
I sympathize with M.'s conflicted feelings of excitement and anxiety. I've been there; I know how it feels to have your whole life in your own two hands, to be solely responsible for yourself. But I told her today to enjoy that feeling: "This is the only time in your life when you'll be able to do anything you want," I said. "You aren't tied to a mortgage or a career or a marriage--anything is possible. That's a wonderful thing."
It's scary to look into that horizon of endless possibility. But if you're never brave enough to take in that vista, I have to believe you're going to wonder what might have been.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Happiness
I'm teaching a seminar on the short story this semester, and one of my students recently asked "Aren't we ever going to read any happy stories?" That led us to a discussion of the fact that happy material doesn't usually make for great fiction; to paraphrase the writer Janet Burroway, fiction is about trouble. No trouble, no story to tell.
Not long after this, in my poetry workshop, we talked about the techniques that allow positive emotions to be expressed in ways that are interesting and complex rather than simple and cliche. One of my students asked "Do professional poets even think about positive emotions?" So I referred him to the poem "Happiness," by Jane Kenyon, which begins with these lines:
The fact that Kenyon wrote about the inevitability of happiness while she was dying of leukemia adds a whole layer of meaning to the poem. Even if you don't know that, though, the connection between happiness and the story of the prodigal son is a beautiful surprise. Who would turn away happiness simply because it disappeared awhile? Who would turn away their child, no matter how long he'd been gone?
As I think I've mentioned before, I always hated the story of the prodigal son when I was a kid--I spent a lot of my energy trying to be good, to do the right thing and not get in trouble. It seemed egregiously unfair to me that the irresponsible kid would end up as the guest of honor at a welcome-home party thrown by his father, and his more responsible brother was also expected to celebrate the return. Of course, all this was before I became a parent myself. Before I knew that it's impossible not to love your child, or to feel relief that they're safe at home, especially after they've been gone for awhile.
As an adult, I understand that this is the way the world works. People make mistakes--or perhaps they just do things we don't agree with, things that disappoint us--and we either forgive them and move on with them in our lives, or we hold a grudge and push them away. Those are our options. Sometimes we try to play the middle ground, keeping them in our lives under specific conditions, but that never leads to anything like a real relationship. We're just pushing them away without exactly saying so.
There's a student at my university, a beautiful, smart, eternally optimistic young woman who's deeply involved with our Campus Ministry group. I think she may be the best example of Christianity I've ever known. She's also gay. This past week, she gave an oral presentation about her Senior Thesis project, which will focus on the ELCA's recent vote to allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as clergy. She'll be exploring the opinions of people on both sides of the issue, and I encouraged her to explore the middle territory as well--"the crap position" as I called it. Those people who say "I won't vote to exclude you from the church because, as a Christian, I'm supposed to love everybody. But I think you're a sinner, so I'll love you the same way I love people who cheat on their spouses or beat their children." In short, people who view love as an absence of action, rather than action itself.
"You mean people like my mom," she said.
She laughed when she said this, and her classmates laughed with her. But I couldn't imagine how painful it must be to know that your mother loves you in spite of who you are, not because of it.
There are so many things to love about this girl. She's exactly the kind of person I hope my kids will grow up to be.
All anybody wants in the world is to know there's a place where they're loved completely, for all their gifts and limitations--to know the joy of unconditional acceptance. I have to believe the prodigal would never have come back home if he hadn't been fairly certain that he could count on his father's forgiveness. He knew he was loved; he knew he'd be welcomed when he returned, just as we welcome happiness into our lives whenever (and wherever) it appears. To do otherwise makes no sense.
Not long after this, in my poetry workshop, we talked about the techniques that allow positive emotions to be expressed in ways that are interesting and complex rather than simple and cliche. One of my students asked "Do professional poets even think about positive emotions?" So I referred him to the poem "Happiness," by Jane Kenyon, which begins with these lines:
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
The fact that Kenyon wrote about the inevitability of happiness while she was dying of leukemia adds a whole layer of meaning to the poem. Even if you don't know that, though, the connection between happiness and the story of the prodigal son is a beautiful surprise. Who would turn away happiness simply because it disappeared awhile? Who would turn away their child, no matter how long he'd been gone?
As I think I've mentioned before, I always hated the story of the prodigal son when I was a kid--I spent a lot of my energy trying to be good, to do the right thing and not get in trouble. It seemed egregiously unfair to me that the irresponsible kid would end up as the guest of honor at a welcome-home party thrown by his father, and his more responsible brother was also expected to celebrate the return. Of course, all this was before I became a parent myself. Before I knew that it's impossible not to love your child, or to feel relief that they're safe at home, especially after they've been gone for awhile.
As an adult, I understand that this is the way the world works. People make mistakes--or perhaps they just do things we don't agree with, things that disappoint us--and we either forgive them and move on with them in our lives, or we hold a grudge and push them away. Those are our options. Sometimes we try to play the middle ground, keeping them in our lives under specific conditions, but that never leads to anything like a real relationship. We're just pushing them away without exactly saying so.
There's a student at my university, a beautiful, smart, eternally optimistic young woman who's deeply involved with our Campus Ministry group. I think she may be the best example of Christianity I've ever known. She's also gay. This past week, she gave an oral presentation about her Senior Thesis project, which will focus on the ELCA's recent vote to allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as clergy. She'll be exploring the opinions of people on both sides of the issue, and I encouraged her to explore the middle territory as well--"the crap position" as I called it. Those people who say "I won't vote to exclude you from the church because, as a Christian, I'm supposed to love everybody. But I think you're a sinner, so I'll love you the same way I love people who cheat on their spouses or beat their children." In short, people who view love as an absence of action, rather than action itself.
"You mean people like my mom," she said.
She laughed when she said this, and her classmates laughed with her. But I couldn't imagine how painful it must be to know that your mother loves you in spite of who you are, not because of it.
There are so many things to love about this girl. She's exactly the kind of person I hope my kids will grow up to be.
All anybody wants in the world is to know there's a place where they're loved completely, for all their gifts and limitations--to know the joy of unconditional acceptance. I have to believe the prodigal would never have come back home if he hadn't been fairly certain that he could count on his father's forgiveness. He knew he was loved; he knew he'd be welcomed when he returned, just as we welcome happiness into our lives whenever (and wherever) it appears. To do otherwise makes no sense.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Esperanza
It’s been really cold in south Texas this week. Honestly, the temperatures don’t have to drop very far before people around here start complaining and the weather personalities on TV start talking about the “bone-chilling cold” outside. But it’s been 20 years since the overnight lows fell into the teens, and even longer since the area saw several days in a row of this kind of cold. I feel completely justified in calling this wintry weather.
I tried to save all the tender plants in my back yard by moving them into the shed. Yesterday, when I went to check on them, the news wasn’t good. My big aloe plant is a puddle of mush in its pot. The hibiscus tree is quite sad and droopy; whether or not the trunk will replace its leaves remains to be seen, but I’m not counting on anything. Same for mandevilla vine. And the things that were planted in the ground—plumbago, esperanza, more hibiscus—are long gone. From what I’ve read online, they can lose their leaves in a frost and still survive, but temperatures this cold tend to kill the root system underground.
I grew up in a place with actual winters, so none of this is unfamiliar territory. I’m accustomed to starting from scratch in the spring; I just haven’t had to do it for awhile, since we’ve had very mild winters for the past few years. But this morning, I was feeling very sad about the loss of the esperanza bush I planted in memory of my friend Linda, who was killed in a car accident last spring. Linda was an avid gardener, and planting a beautiful shrub in her memory seemed like an appropriate gesture.
Well, a little voice in my head said, if you wanted something that would last forever, you should have planted a tree instead of a tropical bush that isn’t cold-tolerant. You can’t be upset when a plant doesn’t do what it’s not equipped to do.
In other words, as St. Exupery writes in The Little Prince, “If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault. It would be mine.”
Later this morning, my husband was reading an article in the Sunday paper about the construction of Main Plaza in downtown San Antonio. It’s finally complete, after a number of delays—including the deaths of seven red oak trees in last summer’s extreme drought. So, not even trees last forever. Longer than most plants, perhaps, but not forever.
I have to drive past the site of Linda’s accident every day. It happened on the interstate I normally travel to and from my campus. After she died, it took awhile before I could drive through that area without thinking of her, wondering if she saw what was about to happen or if the accident took her completely unawares. But the burn marks in the grass and the skid marks on the highway have disappeared now; sometimes I actually drive home without thinking about the fact that we don’t usually know the last day of our lives is, in fact, going to be the last one. The day after Linda’s accident, I kept thinking things like “If she’d left campus two minutes later, or two minutes sooner, or driven a little bit faster or slower—if she’d done even one thing different, she might still be here now. “
True enough. She might still be here—for awhile longer. But Linda’s death, as it occurred, was no one’s fault. The driver who killed her also died in the crash, as did her teenage son, all three of them victims of a blowout at highway speed. No one was drunk or otherwise impaired. No one was being reckless.
Tires blow up. People die. The weather gets cold, and then it gets warm again. Plants die, and some return in the spring, and others don’t. It’s up to us to choose whether to replant or give up on the things that don’t stick around. Mortal things can only do what they were created to do.
I’ve decided to create an esperanza spot in my back yard. If the bush I planted after Linda’s death doesn’t come back in the spring--well, I’ll plant another in its place. Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope. Linda’s legacy will be the reminder that hope is with me as long as I let it be.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
How Nature Nurtures
I've always been a big fan of the great outdoors. When I was very young, my family spent a lot of time camping, fishing and hiking in the mountains around our home in Boise. When I got a little older, those trips became less frequent--but I started spending hours on my bike, long evening hours spent riding around the southeast side of town. This was long before the Ipod (or even the Walkman), so I just enjoyed the relative quiet of being alone on my bike. I come from a loud family; quiet time was hard to come by.
When I went away to college, I spent lots of time between and after classes hiking around the university's arboretum. I didn't have a car on campus, so I walked everywhere I went. But even when I went away to graduate school in Kansas and had a car at my disposal, I walked more often than I drove. Driving is stressful; walking is peaceful. I made good use of that time and did a lot of writing in my head before I sat down to put anything on paper. I slogged through a lot of snow, but I also kicked through many beautiful autumn leaves. I never thought about whether to walk or drive; I walked unless a mile on foot seemed impossible, as it did some sub-zero mornings.
One of my earliest memories of time spent with my husband Mike was the time we spent in Idaho when I brought him home from Kansas to meet my parents. My dad took us on a long drive through the mountains to look at the damage done by a recent forest fire. Eventually, we wound up at Redfish Lake. I remember standing ankle-deep in the lake with my mother, looking for pretty stones on the lake floor. I looked back over my shoulder at my husband, who was standing on the shore and staring at me.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said. "You just look like you belong here."
It made me irrationally happy to hear him say that. I felt like I belonged there, at the foot of the Sawtooth Mountains, and I was glad it showed in some perceptible way.
Lately, as I've started running outdoors more often than I run on the treadmill, I've been thinking about how much comfort I take from being there. Few things make me feel as content as taking a long walk or a good run on a beautiful day. I think this is something I learned from my dad--who was not a walker or (heaven forbid!) a runner, but who spent most of his time working outdoors, in his garden or in the yard. I helped him build the fence that still stands behind my parents' house one Saturday when I was in grade school, without being asked to do so, because I liked being outside. And I loved being with him.
My dad is nearing the end of his life. He's 83; his health is failing and his memory is fading. The last time I was home, for my niece's wedding in October, I worried that he wouldn't remember who I was, since I live so far away and don't see him often. He seemed to know me, though--until he turned to my mother at one point and said "That Mike's wife sure is a nice lady."
It made me sad, of course, to realize that (if only for a moment, until my mom reminded him) my dad didn't know I was his daughter. After I'd moved past that initial sadness, though, I realized that I'd been given a gift. My dad had just made a purely objective assessment of me, and it was entirely positive. He had nothing to gain by saying I was a nice lady; he didn't know he'd had a hand in raising me, so he wasn't giving himself credit for a job well done. I imagine there are very few people who have an objective sense of how their parents feel about them, and I'm one of the lucky few who does.
I think, too, this is nature's way of helping me get used to the fact that the people I love won't be with me forever. My dad is still with us in body, but the person he used to be--the man who knew everything there is to know about making things grow, who taught me how to bait a hook and mark a trail and build a fence--that person just isn't here anymore. He's lost somewhere inside the body that's been left behind in his place.
I've spent some time crying about this, but nature is giving me time to get used to the facts: my dad is not my dad anymore. I'm a middle-aged woman with half-grown children of my own; I don't really need a dad anymore. What I do need is a little time to say goodbye to one of the most important people in my life, and that's precisely what nature is giving me. Rather than fearing the inevitable, I need to recognize that gift and accept it with gratitude. Far too many people never get the chance to say goodbye.
When I went away to college, I spent lots of time between and after classes hiking around the university's arboretum. I didn't have a car on campus, so I walked everywhere I went. But even when I went away to graduate school in Kansas and had a car at my disposal, I walked more often than I drove. Driving is stressful; walking is peaceful. I made good use of that time and did a lot of writing in my head before I sat down to put anything on paper. I slogged through a lot of snow, but I also kicked through many beautiful autumn leaves. I never thought about whether to walk or drive; I walked unless a mile on foot seemed impossible, as it did some sub-zero mornings.
One of my earliest memories of time spent with my husband Mike was the time we spent in Idaho when I brought him home from Kansas to meet my parents. My dad took us on a long drive through the mountains to look at the damage done by a recent forest fire. Eventually, we wound up at Redfish Lake. I remember standing ankle-deep in the lake with my mother, looking for pretty stones on the lake floor. I looked back over my shoulder at my husband, who was standing on the shore and staring at me.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said. "You just look like you belong here."
It made me irrationally happy to hear him say that. I felt like I belonged there, at the foot of the Sawtooth Mountains, and I was glad it showed in some perceptible way.
Lately, as I've started running outdoors more often than I run on the treadmill, I've been thinking about how much comfort I take from being there. Few things make me feel as content as taking a long walk or a good run on a beautiful day. I think this is something I learned from my dad--who was not a walker or (heaven forbid!) a runner, but who spent most of his time working outdoors, in his garden or in the yard. I helped him build the fence that still stands behind my parents' house one Saturday when I was in grade school, without being asked to do so, because I liked being outside. And I loved being with him.
My dad is nearing the end of his life. He's 83; his health is failing and his memory is fading. The last time I was home, for my niece's wedding in October, I worried that he wouldn't remember who I was, since I live so far away and don't see him often. He seemed to know me, though--until he turned to my mother at one point and said "That Mike's wife sure is a nice lady."
It made me sad, of course, to realize that (if only for a moment, until my mom reminded him) my dad didn't know I was his daughter. After I'd moved past that initial sadness, though, I realized that I'd been given a gift. My dad had just made a purely objective assessment of me, and it was entirely positive. He had nothing to gain by saying I was a nice lady; he didn't know he'd had a hand in raising me, so he wasn't giving himself credit for a job well done. I imagine there are very few people who have an objective sense of how their parents feel about them, and I'm one of the lucky few who does.
I think, too, this is nature's way of helping me get used to the fact that the people I love won't be with me forever. My dad is still with us in body, but the person he used to be--the man who knew everything there is to know about making things grow, who taught me how to bait a hook and mark a trail and build a fence--that person just isn't here anymore. He's lost somewhere inside the body that's been left behind in his place.
I've spent some time crying about this, but nature is giving me time to get used to the facts: my dad is not my dad anymore. I'm a middle-aged woman with half-grown children of my own; I don't really need a dad anymore. What I do need is a little time to say goodbye to one of the most important people in my life, and that's precisely what nature is giving me. Rather than fearing the inevitable, I need to recognize that gift and accept it with gratitude. Far too many people never get the chance to say goodbye.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
More than Words
Yesterday I offered the message during chapel services on campus. I'd been asked to do this in my official capacity as director of the Center for Women's Studies, because the student who's interning with the Center this semester is also very involved with Campus Ministries. I would have said no if I'd thought I could get away with it--but, alas, I knew I couldn't.
I stand up in front of people and talk for a living, so it's not performance anxiety that was freaking me out yesterday morning--I lecture in class, I give readings of my fiction, I give talks on the writing process. But I don't talk about my faith very often. The truth is, I feel like a bit of a faith phony. I grew up going to church, but I never liked going. In fact, I really hated church. I had to get up early on Sunday morning and dress well and act nice; I had to listen to things that didn't make sense to me, and then I had to pretend that I believed them. Faith felt completely irrelevant to my life, and no one really seemed to care--as long as I was getting up and going to church on Sunday morning.
I stopped going to church as soon as I'd left home, and I didn't go back again until I was almost forty years old. I've actually enjoyed church as an adult--mostly because of wonderful colleagues in the Theology department at my university, people who've encouraged me to understand that my faith is personal, that it involves both what I believe in my heart and what I know in my head. I can get on board with the idea of an intellectually respectable faith. I even enjoy Bible study, which now seems like a natural offshoot of what I do as a literature professor.
So yesterday, when I was asked to speak in chapel, I brought the two together. I talked about a poem by W.H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening," and I tied it to our scripture reading on the greatest commandment. (The full text of the poem is available here.)
Here's the text of my talk:
"A few weeks ago, my good friend Dr. Metereau reminded me of a poem I’d read many years ago and forgotten. It’s a poem I love—W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.” It’s a pretty long poem, so I’m not going to read you the whole thing today, though I do hope you’ll look it up. Basically, it’s about a person who goes out for a walk one evening and overhears someone singing of undying love for a partner—telling this partner, among other things, “I’ll love you till the ocean/is folded and hung up to dry/And the seven stars go squawking/Like geese about the sky.”
But not long after this, the speaker of the poem hears another song, as “all the clocks in the city/began to whir and chime,” and their song is much less optimistic: the clocks sing, “O let not Time deceive you;/you cannot conquer Time.”
The clocks continue this song, encouraging the lover to acknowledge their much greater power and to understand that no human being will ever win this battle: human love, unlike time, will come to an end. When it does, it will leave us with a feeling of emptiness—of empty time—where that love used to be. I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling at one point or another. It’s the feeling of loss that makes us question whether love is even worth our while.
The clocks in this poem offer three images of that kind of despair. They say “' . . . plunge your hands in water, /Plunge them in up to the wrist;/Stare, stare in the basin/ And wonder what you've missed.” And then: “'. . . look in the mirror,/ O look in your distress:/ Life remains a blessing/ Although you cannot bless.” And lastly: ". . . stand at the window /As the tears scald and start;/You shall love your crooked neighbour/ With your crooked heart.’”
Those last lines are my favorite. I think it’s interesting that Auden doesn’t say “You must love your crooked neighbor”—that would be a commandment. Nor does he say “You should love your crooked neighbor”—which would suggest that we don’t, and we need to get busy. Instead, Auden just says “You shall love your crooked neighbor.” It’s a statement of fact. It recognizes a very simple truth: human beings can’t avoid connecting with each other, even though we know that imperfect human love is going to leave us wanting.
Of course, Auden also points out that we’re going to love our crooked neighbors with crooked hearts. So what we have in common with one another, it seems, is our imperfection. And maybe that’s why we can’t avoid loving each other—because to love an imperfect person is to prove that you, as another imperfect person, are also worthy of being loved. Maybe we use our connections with each other to escape from the fact of our shortcomings.
The scripture reading for today tells us that we are to love our neighbors in the same way we love ourselves—but we all know that loving ourselves isn’t always an easy job. We live in a culture that’s devoted to pointing out our shortcomings. Women, in particular, are constantly being convinced that they need products that will make their imperfections less noticeable to others—which will make them more beautiful and, by extension, more loveable.
We also live in a culture that views some kinds of love as less perfect than others. Auden himself was a gay man, and a Christian, and he struggled to reconcile his faith and his personal identity, because he’d been taught that this kind of love was sinful—and yet, no matter how hard he tried to change his heart, that kind of love was what he found there.
I don’t think it’s an accident that, in contemporary culture, to be heterosexual is to be called “straight”; we used the word “crooked” to describe a person who is dishonest or immoral. But maybe, if we understand the “crookedness” Auden is talking about in this poem to be symbolic, not of immorality, but of the path that each of us walks through life—sometimes headed toward God, sometimes headed away from God—then we can begin to understand how crookedness is something we all share, no matter who we love.
In fact, sometimes the people we love the most—our friends, even our family—are the ones who lead us away from God. They do this by offering negative assessments of us, and they often claim to do this for our own good. Sometimes, our self-image is so warped by the negative messages we’ve taken in that they become a part of us: we honestly can’t imagine how anyone, even God, could love us. Our hearts move toward those negative assessments rather than toward God’s love of our glorious imperfection.
When we get to that place of self-loathing, we often lead ourselves even farther away from God. Auden, for instance, declared himself an atheist—but his poetry shows a consistent devotion to Christian faith, and he did eventually turn back to God and reconcile with the church.
Here’s a more contemporary example: in light of the recent decisions made by the ELCA’s church-wide assembly, many members of my congregation have simply stopped worshiping with our church family. They’ve just walked away. Before those decisions were made, I thought a lot about what I would do if I disagreed with the outcome of the church-wide assembly, and I thought I might leave the church. But I couldn’t get around the fact that we walk away from God anytime we’re too confident in our understanding of anything.
The truth is, I don’t know if the church-wide assembly made the right decision. I believe they did—I believe they acted out of love for their neighbors. But I don’t know. And I try to remember that I don’t know (which is hard for me, because I’m a professor, and I’m used to being the person in the room who knows things) so I’m not compelled to act unkindly toward my neighbors who disagree, because I’m called to love them, too.
What I do know is this: our imperfect human love is the best thing we have to offer each other, and it’s the only way we have to fulfill the greatest commandment: Love the Lord, love your neighbor, love yourself. None of these things are easy, but Auden seems to believe they’re inevitable. You will love your crooked neighbor, he says. Only remember that, when you do, you love with an equally crooked heart."
I got through my talk and hoped I hadn't made a fool of myself--that was really the only goal I had in mind. The adrenaline I'd built up left me shaking for a good half hour afterward. I got lots of hugs and pats on the back from my students and colleagues, but friends will say you've done well just because they know they should. It's what friends do.
But then, after I'd headed off to class, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around, but I didn't see anyone I recognized. A young woman was walking toward me--but because I wasn't sure I'd heard my name, I wasn't sure if she was just walking in my direction or walking up to me. I must have looked very confused, because she said "It's okay, you don't know me." She introduced herself, then said, "I just wanted to tell you that I really like what you said in chapel. It got to me." She was all choked up as she said this. I thanked her and patted her shoulder, and then we parted ways.
That young woman is the person who let me know I'd done more than just get through my chapel talk. I'd touched the heart of a complete stranger--someone who didn't know me at all, who had no reason to feel compelled to say anything kind. She gave me hope that my words make a difference in the world. And she can't possibly know how much her words meant to me.
I stand up in front of people and talk for a living, so it's not performance anxiety that was freaking me out yesterday morning--I lecture in class, I give readings of my fiction, I give talks on the writing process. But I don't talk about my faith very often. The truth is, I feel like a bit of a faith phony. I grew up going to church, but I never liked going. In fact, I really hated church. I had to get up early on Sunday morning and dress well and act nice; I had to listen to things that didn't make sense to me, and then I had to pretend that I believed them. Faith felt completely irrelevant to my life, and no one really seemed to care--as long as I was getting up and going to church on Sunday morning.
I stopped going to church as soon as I'd left home, and I didn't go back again until I was almost forty years old. I've actually enjoyed church as an adult--mostly because of wonderful colleagues in the Theology department at my university, people who've encouraged me to understand that my faith is personal, that it involves both what I believe in my heart and what I know in my head. I can get on board with the idea of an intellectually respectable faith. I even enjoy Bible study, which now seems like a natural offshoot of what I do as a literature professor.
So yesterday, when I was asked to speak in chapel, I brought the two together. I talked about a poem by W.H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening," and I tied it to our scripture reading on the greatest commandment. (The full text of the poem is available here.)
Here's the text of my talk:
"A few weeks ago, my good friend Dr. Metereau reminded me of a poem I’d read many years ago and forgotten. It’s a poem I love—W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.” It’s a pretty long poem, so I’m not going to read you the whole thing today, though I do hope you’ll look it up. Basically, it’s about a person who goes out for a walk one evening and overhears someone singing of undying love for a partner—telling this partner, among other things, “I’ll love you till the ocean/is folded and hung up to dry/And the seven stars go squawking/Like geese about the sky.”
But not long after this, the speaker of the poem hears another song, as “all the clocks in the city/began to whir and chime,” and their song is much less optimistic: the clocks sing, “O let not Time deceive you;/you cannot conquer Time.”
The clocks continue this song, encouraging the lover to acknowledge their much greater power and to understand that no human being will ever win this battle: human love, unlike time, will come to an end. When it does, it will leave us with a feeling of emptiness—of empty time—where that love used to be. I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling at one point or another. It’s the feeling of loss that makes us question whether love is even worth our while.
The clocks in this poem offer three images of that kind of despair. They say “' . . . plunge your hands in water, /Plunge them in up to the wrist;/Stare, stare in the basin/ And wonder what you've missed.” And then: “'. . . look in the mirror,/ O look in your distress:/ Life remains a blessing/ Although you cannot bless.” And lastly: ". . . stand at the window /As the tears scald and start;/You shall love your crooked neighbour/ With your crooked heart.’”
Those last lines are my favorite. I think it’s interesting that Auden doesn’t say “You must love your crooked neighbor”—that would be a commandment. Nor does he say “You should love your crooked neighbor”—which would suggest that we don’t, and we need to get busy. Instead, Auden just says “You shall love your crooked neighbor.” It’s a statement of fact. It recognizes a very simple truth: human beings can’t avoid connecting with each other, even though we know that imperfect human love is going to leave us wanting.
Of course, Auden also points out that we’re going to love our crooked neighbors with crooked hearts. So what we have in common with one another, it seems, is our imperfection. And maybe that’s why we can’t avoid loving each other—because to love an imperfect person is to prove that you, as another imperfect person, are also worthy of being loved. Maybe we use our connections with each other to escape from the fact of our shortcomings.
The scripture reading for today tells us that we are to love our neighbors in the same way we love ourselves—but we all know that loving ourselves isn’t always an easy job. We live in a culture that’s devoted to pointing out our shortcomings. Women, in particular, are constantly being convinced that they need products that will make their imperfections less noticeable to others—which will make them more beautiful and, by extension, more loveable.
We also live in a culture that views some kinds of love as less perfect than others. Auden himself was a gay man, and a Christian, and he struggled to reconcile his faith and his personal identity, because he’d been taught that this kind of love was sinful—and yet, no matter how hard he tried to change his heart, that kind of love was what he found there.
I don’t think it’s an accident that, in contemporary culture, to be heterosexual is to be called “straight”; we used the word “crooked” to describe a person who is dishonest or immoral. But maybe, if we understand the “crookedness” Auden is talking about in this poem to be symbolic, not of immorality, but of the path that each of us walks through life—sometimes headed toward God, sometimes headed away from God—then we can begin to understand how crookedness is something we all share, no matter who we love.
In fact, sometimes the people we love the most—our friends, even our family—are the ones who lead us away from God. They do this by offering negative assessments of us, and they often claim to do this for our own good. Sometimes, our self-image is so warped by the negative messages we’ve taken in that they become a part of us: we honestly can’t imagine how anyone, even God, could love us. Our hearts move toward those negative assessments rather than toward God’s love of our glorious imperfection.
When we get to that place of self-loathing, we often lead ourselves even farther away from God. Auden, for instance, declared himself an atheist—but his poetry shows a consistent devotion to Christian faith, and he did eventually turn back to God and reconcile with the church.
Here’s a more contemporary example: in light of the recent decisions made by the ELCA’s church-wide assembly, many members of my congregation have simply stopped worshiping with our church family. They’ve just walked away. Before those decisions were made, I thought a lot about what I would do if I disagreed with the outcome of the church-wide assembly, and I thought I might leave the church. But I couldn’t get around the fact that we walk away from God anytime we’re too confident in our understanding of anything.
The truth is, I don’t know if the church-wide assembly made the right decision. I believe they did—I believe they acted out of love for their neighbors. But I don’t know. And I try to remember that I don’t know (which is hard for me, because I’m a professor, and I’m used to being the person in the room who knows things) so I’m not compelled to act unkindly toward my neighbors who disagree, because I’m called to love them, too.
What I do know is this: our imperfect human love is the best thing we have to offer each other, and it’s the only way we have to fulfill the greatest commandment: Love the Lord, love your neighbor, love yourself. None of these things are easy, but Auden seems to believe they’re inevitable. You will love your crooked neighbor, he says. Only remember that, when you do, you love with an equally crooked heart."
I got through my talk and hoped I hadn't made a fool of myself--that was really the only goal I had in mind. The adrenaline I'd built up left me shaking for a good half hour afterward. I got lots of hugs and pats on the back from my students and colleagues, but friends will say you've done well just because they know they should. It's what friends do.
But then, after I'd headed off to class, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around, but I didn't see anyone I recognized. A young woman was walking toward me--but because I wasn't sure I'd heard my name, I wasn't sure if she was just walking in my direction or walking up to me. I must have looked very confused, because she said "It's okay, you don't know me." She introduced herself, then said, "I just wanted to tell you that I really like what you said in chapel. It got to me." She was all choked up as she said this. I thanked her and patted her shoulder, and then we parted ways.
That young woman is the person who let me know I'd done more than just get through my chapel talk. I'd touched the heart of a complete stranger--someone who didn't know me at all, who had no reason to feel compelled to say anything kind. She gave me hope that my words make a difference in the world. And she can't possibly know how much her words meant to me.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Gentle Giants
I went to the movies with my son yesterday--we saw Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's interpretation of the book by Maurice Sendak. I don't know what I expected from the film, exactly, but what I took from it was much different (and much more profound) than anything I could have anticipated.
People who haven't liked the film, as far as I can tell, went in expecting a lighthearted adventure fantasy. I'm not sure why anyone would expect that--at least, not anyone who's read the book. The monsters in Sendak's story were enormous, scary creatures who gnashed their teeth and bared their claws and rolled their eyes. They were the creation of an angry little boy, Max, who'd been sent to his room for misbehaving. Why would they be cuddly, fun-loving friends? Max isn't looking for someone to play with; he's looking for a place where he can finally call the shots. That can't happen in the human world, where big people boss the little people around, so it has to happen in an imaginary world where small people rule. And the occupants of that world might as well be big and scary, to illustrate just how powerful the small people are.
The film version of this story deals more with the psychology of Max's experience (and of being a child, in general) than with monsters or wild rumpus. The movie begins with several scenes of Max acting like a boy of eight or nine--first chasing his dog, then building a snow fort of which he's particularly proud, then trying to get his big sister Claire's attention so he can show off the fort. Her conscious decision to ignore him in these scenes obviously hurts Max, as does the fact that Claire and her friends don't care about his pain when the snow fort is destroyed during a snowball fight gone awry. Jonze is careful to show that the big kids, especially Claire, see exactly what they've done and choose to walk away from it without apology or concern. Max is just a little kid, after all. He has no power to shape the behavior of older people. He does, however, have enough power to trash his sister's bedroom--so he does. He pays particular attention to destroying a gift he made for her some time ago. And then he regrets that decision, as we all regret things we've done in anger.
There's a casual mention, in this early scene, of Max and his sister spending the weekend with their dad. So later, when Max's mother is entertaining a male friend, we're not entirely surprised to see Max throw a tantrum--once again, he has no power to change what's happening around him, to stop the gradual unraveling of his family. This time, though, the frustration of being put in that position leads him to run away from his mother and sail off to the island of the Wild Things, where some smooth storytelling skills help him to establish himself as the king.
The problem with being the king, of course, is that people expect you to fix their problems. To talk about everything that happens on the island would take far too long, and the events of that experience aren't really the point anyway--suffice it to say that Max's imaginary world is similar to the real world in meaningful ways. He meets a monster who's very much like himself; when Max arrives, Carol is throwing a tantrum. Carol is frustrated by situations he can't control, too, including his rejection by another monster, KW. Carol and KW have been romantic partners at some point in the past, it seems, but KW's lank hair and big eyes are also reminiscent of Claire's. KW just doesn't feel about Carol the way she used to--she has new, more interesting friends to hang out with--and Carol doesn't understand why this is happening, and KW can't really put her feelings into words. Maybe there are no words for what she feels. She just knows that she doesn't want to hang around Carol anymore.
At one point, Carol shows Max a model world he's created, a world in which he and KW ride a canoe together down a lazy river. Some time after this--after Max has to admit that he's not a king, just a regular boy who lacks the power to shield the world from sadness, as he promised he would--Max discovers that Carol has destroyed his model in another fit of anger. And Max knows what this means: Carol has given up on thinking things in his life will ever be okay again. He worries that Carol will turn that anger against him, as well. So in the rubble of that imaginary utopia, Max leaves Carol a sign that he loves him and hopes that will make a difference.
And it does, of course. Small acts of love are the only thing that can bring us back to each other those moments of intense frustration and anger. The end of the movie, when Max leaves the island to head back home and Carol watches him leave, weeping openly, is simply heartbreaking. Max has to go back--he's just a little boy, after all, and he misses his mom. But he doesn't want to hurt Carol. He knows how painful it is to be abandoned. Still, Max has learned that you can't rely on someone else to fix your problems, and you can't run away from them either. Sometimes, lacking the power to change a situation, you just have to live with things the way they are.
Any movie that's honest about childhood has to be sad. Both my son and I were crying our eyes out by the end of the film. Many people like to romanticize childhood as a carefree and magical time in our lives, but the truth is that it's the time when we learn the hardest lessons: Human beings are often unkind to each other for no real reason. There is no magic for solving the world's problems. There is only love--and love, sadly, can disappear without warning.
Like I said, I don't know what I expected from this film. What I got was a beautiful reminder of how scary it is to be a child, powerless in a world where small acts of caring are the only defense against the Wild Things that threaten to eat us up.
People who haven't liked the film, as far as I can tell, went in expecting a lighthearted adventure fantasy. I'm not sure why anyone would expect that--at least, not anyone who's read the book. The monsters in Sendak's story were enormous, scary creatures who gnashed their teeth and bared their claws and rolled their eyes. They were the creation of an angry little boy, Max, who'd been sent to his room for misbehaving. Why would they be cuddly, fun-loving friends? Max isn't looking for someone to play with; he's looking for a place where he can finally call the shots. That can't happen in the human world, where big people boss the little people around, so it has to happen in an imaginary world where small people rule. And the occupants of that world might as well be big and scary, to illustrate just how powerful the small people are.
The film version of this story deals more with the psychology of Max's experience (and of being a child, in general) than with monsters or wild rumpus. The movie begins with several scenes of Max acting like a boy of eight or nine--first chasing his dog, then building a snow fort of which he's particularly proud, then trying to get his big sister Claire's attention so he can show off the fort. Her conscious decision to ignore him in these scenes obviously hurts Max, as does the fact that Claire and her friends don't care about his pain when the snow fort is destroyed during a snowball fight gone awry. Jonze is careful to show that the big kids, especially Claire, see exactly what they've done and choose to walk away from it without apology or concern. Max is just a little kid, after all. He has no power to shape the behavior of older people. He does, however, have enough power to trash his sister's bedroom--so he does. He pays particular attention to destroying a gift he made for her some time ago. And then he regrets that decision, as we all regret things we've done in anger.
There's a casual mention, in this early scene, of Max and his sister spending the weekend with their dad. So later, when Max's mother is entertaining a male friend, we're not entirely surprised to see Max throw a tantrum--once again, he has no power to change what's happening around him, to stop the gradual unraveling of his family. This time, though, the frustration of being put in that position leads him to run away from his mother and sail off to the island of the Wild Things, where some smooth storytelling skills help him to establish himself as the king.
The problem with being the king, of course, is that people expect you to fix their problems. To talk about everything that happens on the island would take far too long, and the events of that experience aren't really the point anyway--suffice it to say that Max's imaginary world is similar to the real world in meaningful ways. He meets a monster who's very much like himself; when Max arrives, Carol is throwing a tantrum. Carol is frustrated by situations he can't control, too, including his rejection by another monster, KW. Carol and KW have been romantic partners at some point in the past, it seems, but KW's lank hair and big eyes are also reminiscent of Claire's. KW just doesn't feel about Carol the way she used to--she has new, more interesting friends to hang out with--and Carol doesn't understand why this is happening, and KW can't really put her feelings into words. Maybe there are no words for what she feels. She just knows that she doesn't want to hang around Carol anymore.
At one point, Carol shows Max a model world he's created, a world in which he and KW ride a canoe together down a lazy river. Some time after this--after Max has to admit that he's not a king, just a regular boy who lacks the power to shield the world from sadness, as he promised he would--Max discovers that Carol has destroyed his model in another fit of anger. And Max knows what this means: Carol has given up on thinking things in his life will ever be okay again. He worries that Carol will turn that anger against him, as well. So in the rubble of that imaginary utopia, Max leaves Carol a sign that he loves him and hopes that will make a difference.
And it does, of course. Small acts of love are the only thing that can bring us back to each other those moments of intense frustration and anger. The end of the movie, when Max leaves the island to head back home and Carol watches him leave, weeping openly, is simply heartbreaking. Max has to go back--he's just a little boy, after all, and he misses his mom. But he doesn't want to hurt Carol. He knows how painful it is to be abandoned. Still, Max has learned that you can't rely on someone else to fix your problems, and you can't run away from them either. Sometimes, lacking the power to change a situation, you just have to live with things the way they are.
Any movie that's honest about childhood has to be sad. Both my son and I were crying our eyes out by the end of the film. Many people like to romanticize childhood as a carefree and magical time in our lives, but the truth is that it's the time when we learn the hardest lessons: Human beings are often unkind to each other for no real reason. There is no magic for solving the world's problems. There is only love--and love, sadly, can disappear without warning.
Like I said, I don't know what I expected from this film. What I got was a beautiful reminder of how scary it is to be a child, powerless in a world where small acts of caring are the only defense against the Wild Things that threaten to eat us up.
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