December 23, 2009
Back When We Were Grown-Ups by Anne Tyler is the perfect read for mothers and wives during this holiday time of year. I loved it. The book tells the story of Rebecca Davitch, brought into a large extended family when she was barely twenty. When her husband dies just six years later, Rebecca is left alone to take care of one daughter, three stepdaughters, an aging uncle, and a family business, along with the mess, trials, tribulations, and joys of the entire Davitch clan. Thirty years later Rebecca looks back and wonders how her life would have gone if she had followed another path with another man, and created another family all her own.
What Anne Tyler always does so well, and in this novel masters to perfection, is portray the realities of what it means to be a mother and a wife: it is to give, and to plan, and to work, and to worry; it is to secure and buttress as much as possible -- and smile as much as possible through it all -- a safe, warm, and happy refuge of home and family for all its participants. Are we crazy? We can't do all that but we try, and we do a pretty good job of it, most of the time. Rebecca's growing resentment over always being the cheerful one, the caring one, and the dependable one will resonate with readers. Especially during this time of year, when women are often the ones taking care of the mundane but essential underlying details necessary to carry on traditions and rituals with little thanks or credit given for all our efforts, Rebecca's situation as family party-planner, toast-giver, and joy creator rang a hearty bell of recognition. When Rebecca's too-often ungrateful brood actually have the gall to complain or ridicule Rebecca's efforts, the bell-ringing becomes tolling of an ominous timbre: watch out, kids, mom's ready to blow.
Rebecca begins to indulge in a full-force fantasy of what her life would have been like if she had stayed in college and married her college sweetheart. The fantasy sustains her through house repairs, family tiffs, a birthday party for a centenarian, and a third wedding for a daughter, but in the end, Rebecca comes to understand, in wisdom underscored by the man most constant in her life, one she never chose to live with but who has been her companion for thirty years: "There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be." We have many lives, interior, exterior, the one our kids see, the one we share with friends, the one we share with family. Sometimes those selves and lives overlap, but through all of the different aspects of living, the only constant is your very own self. The best you can do, is to find the times, places, and spaces where you can say, as Rebecca does, that you "really had been having a wonderful time."
Merry Christmas to all my readers. Take time to sit down and relax during the holidays. Look around in wonder at the beauty and love that surrounds you, in all its varying degrees, and myriad of details. Remember the role that you yourself have played in bringing happiness and joy to people. Open up a book and let yourself escape in the words. Find comfort and pleasure and knowledge in people and pets and books and food and movies and places, inside and out. Smile, make a toast to yourself, and have a great 2010!
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