I spent much of yesterday moving area rugs and cleaning the floors underneath. Tiny treasures, such as stale cheerios, old goldfish crackers, pieces of Lego and wooden beads abounded. Moving the furniture by myself (wedging my back under and table and lifting, turtle-like) to smooth out area rugs was a delight--not a necessity, since Martin would have lent a hand, but my preference, because then I don't have to worry about any grumpiness but mine. I couldn't possibly lift the piano, though I tried, so I had to wait for a little extra help. I hate it when I can't do things all by myself. Hmm. Maybe that's where the girls get their sometimes-alarming, mostly-encouraging independence.
Merry just cornered me in the dining room and told me about a book that her friend Cat had read and hated. Turns out the blurb on the back amounted to what they thought was false advertising: it told about the friendship between a boy and a girl, all the wonderful things they did, and the cover showed the smiling little girl about to cross a rope bridge over a rushing river. Unfortunately, Merry says, at the very end of the book, the little girl gets swept into the same river and dies. "Can you believe it?" she says. "It's AWFUL. Why would they have to do that in a story? The mom or dad could have died, and that would have been better. But not the KID." Merry was so upset her eyes were almost watering. It seemed like a good opportunity to talk about fiction, but Merry was not persuaded by any of my arguments. "They were supposed to have good times," Merry said, "The book is actually called the name of the river. That's the main part of the story--" Merry stares at me with incredulous eyes--"She dies."
I felt the same way about "Mill on the Floss," but I had to read through two million pages to get to the final drowning scene. Fiction. It's full of pitfalls. Better to avoid it altogether and focus on daily activities, like moving enormous pieces of furniture.
:) Happy Friday, everyone.
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7 comments:
You are woman I hear you roar!!
I felt the same exact way when I read that book as a child. It just doesn't seem right!! Give Merry a squeeze from me. :)
I hate stories like that!
It's almost criminal to do that to young kids. They will learn about tragedy soon enough, this is a time for happy endings.
Re; your moving pianos, automobiles etc. by yourself.
Once again DNA from your NaNa is in evidence.
Your Auntie does stuff like that on a regular basis, much to my chagrin.
Just yesterday she moved a double drawer wood file cabinet that I'd just bought out of the truck and into the garage.
Big and bulky as well as heavy.
I call her "Queen Boudica" on such occasions. She once moved a dead adult deer from our yard onto the side of the road, when the DOT told her they wouldn't pick it up unless it was next to the highway. A large adult doe, it had to weigh 120#.
Grunt and lift!
That movie is one of J's favorites, though it always makes her cry (me too).
T
I had a book of animal stories when I was a kid. Came across it a few years back. It's a Christian book, handily equipped with morals at the end of each chapter. There's one story about a boy and his dog--I can't remember all the details, but essentially the boy disobeys, and because of something related to his disobedience, his dog gets hit by a car and dies. The moral? Obey your parents. Or, perhaps, work out your God issues in adult fiction, not kids'.
I watched an interview with Katherine Patterson once, at which she said that she wrote the book after one of her son's friends was killed. It was a way for both of them to work through the grief.
T
oh that book makes me weep like no other. merry is right it is horribly unjust. And don't we read fiction to see light in a dark world. And yet there is a rawness to that story which moves me everytime.
I hope everyone knows that I wrote the above post tongue-in-cheek, amused by and sympathetic to Merry's outrage. The fact that the tragedy seems wrong and causes anger in my sweet daughter who wants everything to be just and make sense is exactly why fiction exists--we are are moved by those mysteries in life, the way the unanswerables link us to each other with compassion. . .and when questions are too large and scary, we turn to story every time to help us wrestle with the mysteries. I admire Katherine Paterson.
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