2013 BOOK CHALLENGE 19/35: WHAT WE KEEP

It's been quite a while since I last posted here. There were a lot I would have wanted to post here but I reckon there were an awful lot of things that needed attending to after AB went back to New York. You see, for 10 whole days AB was here my life was also on hold. I temporarily assumed role as her buntot. Meaning, I go wherever she goes. I enjoyed it as did my tummy and now I am suffering the consequences. Anyway, what I also wanted to say was my book reading was also suspended for those ten days. If we weren't sleeping, we were eating or chatting so that doesn't really give me time to catch up on my reading. And that is why it took one whole month to finish What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg albeit I really found it interesting.

goodreads.com

What We Keep was a deviance from my usual teenybopper, kilig-inducing YA novels. I don't know how I came to choose this title; it must have been one of those assign-a-number-to-a-title method of selection. However, I was truly happy over my pick and coincidentally, it was very timely being a book about a mother-daughter relationship as we are celebrating Mother's Day this month.

Ginny hasn't seen her mother for 35 years. Although it was against her will to go visit her mother, she had to as it was the wish of her elder sister, Sharla, who may or may have not have a terminal illness. Ginny hated her mother. I wanted to know why.

The book consisted mainly of flashbacks to Ginny and Sharla's childhood. Pleasantville-ish. And the moms, Stepford Wives-ish. Ginny and Sharla have led a happy, normal childhood until the time when their mother packed up and left. Their mother did have her reasons which were revealed later on, but I understand where Ginny was coming from. Only twelve years old, I could just imagine how disoriented she must have felt when their mom just left. Sure they already noticed something was different with her but nothing had prepared them for the trauma of being abandoned by their own mother.

We later on find out that Mom did have her reasons for leaving- that she felt empty and felt the need to follow her dreams and his husband slept with the next-door neighbor. But what baffles me is why was she able to forgive the next-door neighbor easily but left the husband?

"It's funny how, oftentimes, the people you love the most

are given the least margin for error."

I have always felt that when one gets married and have children, the person takes the back seat. I believe that the children should be the main consideration from now on. Mom left because she wasn't happy anymore, she wanted to find her happiness even at the expense of her own children's happiness. So you see I understood why Ginny and Sharla hated their mother. It was heartbreaking when these two young girls were suddenly left by their mother. The only good thing that arose from this event was that the two sisters have become very, very close as they found solace in each other. But still, it was a very selfish thing thing what the mother did. 

However, it was also a heartbreaking moment when the mother went back and tried to be a part of her children's lives but they just rejected her. Well, she asked for it. Her kids felt betrayed by her when she just suddenly left without any warning. Moreso, when her kids heard her say that she didn't even want them in the first place, that they hindered her from being what she originally had planned to be. 

Time heals all wounds but a little explanation can help, too. It's just sad that it took them 35 long years to finally forgive and not be there for each other's milestones. But at they say, the journey is the destination. Some things happen in our lives and in that moment, we do not understand why it happens but eventually we see why.

"Well, this may sound odd. But what really brought me comfort was  going to big university bookstores and looking at the physics books." My eyes snap open at this. I can't believe we both seek solace in science, and that we never knew this about each other. You can't get away from some things. You say you're turning your back on someone, and you start off down a long road, and you walk so very far, and then you find out the road is just a big circle and you are back where you started. I laugh to myself, close my eyes again. "I didn't really understand them," my mother says, "but the illustrations were so graceful and the writing seemed so wise and compassionate. Those books was beyond my comprehension, but there was a logic, a reason for things happening. It made me see that humans are very small and insignificant; that all our triumphs and errors don't really amount to much at all. There are times that notion can scare you or depress you; but there are other times when thinking about it can help you sleep. Things like- well, I would read something like the first law of thermodynamics and just find it enormously comforting. I still do. Think of it, the notion of nothing ever being lost, of it just changing form."

It was a beautiful story written very well. I am sure most girls can relate to this. I remember telling my sister about this book and described to her that it's a story of a girl/woman who hated her mother so much. She told me, "parang ikaw?"  To which, I beg to differ. I do not hate my mother. I love her and appreciate everything she does for me, for us. But I think mothers and daughters are really meant to bicker and criticize each other even about the most mundane things. 

After reading this book, I think I understand my mother more, where she's coming from but mothers, I think, also need to realize that their daughters are their own persons with their own interests and opinions and they need to respect that. Not because she likes arroz valenciana, her daughter does too? 

It had to do with my offering my daughters what I so needed and was denied. I couldn't imagine why they wouldn't be grateful. How could they not be grateful when surely they could see that I was only trying to love them, to give them what I knew they needed- whether they knew it or not?

Sometimes, you just have to let her see for herself. Let her commit that mistake. Man meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. In other words, kahit ano mang pag-iwas, we all eventually become our mothers. Ayayayay! Keri ko bang mag-crochet top na walang sando 'pag 60 na ako? Haha.