Choosing Ebenezer

(NOTE:  I’m doing two entries today because I missed Saturday.)

I was six years old when my youngest brother was born.  I can’t remember how I reacted when the people who were babysitting me informed me that I had yet another brother, but they claim I walked into the back yard and kicked a post.  I have no memory of it.

I do, however, have a memory of when I first saw Brian.  He was in mother’s lap in the front seat of our old white Ford sedan.  This was in the days before car seats for babies.  He was wearing a little blue outfit and cap, and he was red and crying.  I was gone.  He was the coolest thing I ever, ever, ever saw.  I loved him from that moment on.  He was my baby brother, and I was ready to introduce him to all the great things in the world, especially the world of stories.

I learned to read early, really early.  My mother would read to me stories from The Child’s World, a collection of books with stories and poems.  I also had my own collection of little books from my babyhood.  One of them was titled “Are You My Mother?”  I saw it the other day, and so I know it was written by P.D. Eastman.  I paid no attention to such details when I was little, but (you know) now that I write, writers’ names mean something to me.

Anyway, when Brian was only a baby, I would hold him and read “Are You My Mother” to him.  It is one of those great stories, the kind that have the perfect arc of plot.  Kurt Vonnegut describes it as “a man falls in a hole.”  The baby bird falls from the nest.  It can’t fly back so it goes searching for its mother.  It encounters other things, a kitten, a hen, a dog, a cow, and (genius) a front-end loader that the chick calls  a “Snort.”  The Snort puts the baby bird back in his nest, and his mother flies up and he knows immediately that she is his mother.  It helps that she has a little hanky tied on her head.  So…Brian was the first person I ever read a story.  It was great.  And in our very readerly household, he read right back to us.  Even when he was little he could read big articles from Reader’s Digest at the kitchen table.  He had a perfect sense of what the family would like.  We still like to read to each other, though we don’t get to very often.

There’s a pleasure in reading.  I know that all sorts of folks out there like to read.  We just don’t read to each other much.  That should change, right? We should try and bring that to more people.  I don’t have “Are You My Mother?” anymore, but I DO have The Child’s World.  I think I’m going to look at it again this summer.

Here is a picture of me from the summer when Brian was born.  You will notice my uncanny resemblance to Tina Belcher.  More on that later.

I can’t believe how many days it has been since I’m logged in to let folks know what’s happening at Casa McCollaum.  So…rather than go into the grim details, I will say that mother seems to be on a more even keel since her bout of dizziness earlier this month.  She had gotten dangerously low on electrolytes, and that had made her weak, confused, unsteady, and all her food had a strange metallic flavor.  Well, at least I learned the warning signs.

Years ago she went through a similar experience, but at that time, she had been sick with a bad cold.  Not so much, this time.

After a trip to the hospital and then home and then back to the hospital and a change in meds, and me almost losing it, thinking thoughts like, “You’re lucky I don’t punch people because you are prime candidate,” about a little prissy girl who couldn’t be bothered to help mother or me when we were in the emergency room, we finally got home.  We’ve now been home a week, a whole darn week.  I thought folks might like to see a picture of Mother with her little friend the day she got home, so here it is.

I am so deeply thankful to those of you who have visited and prayed and encouraged us both.  So many people in this little world in which we live are dear to me, and to Mother.  We hope all of you have a joyous Christmas season.  Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I…even the folks who sometimes are the focus of my sinful wrath.

Today we add working thesis from my two remaining Seniors.  The first is examines way in which violence begets more violence.  The second explores how Heathcliff falls from remade man into mad monster.  Let’s hope the essays are as pleasing as the theses are promising.

“Emily Bronte uses mental and physical violence of each character in Wuthering Heights to show that every character portrays an inner evil because of the abuse and violence they endure.”

Andrew Kulikoff

“Although Heathcliff pursues justice by returning home to seek revenge, he takes it way too far and therefore becomes the monster himself.”

Jose Ochoa

I like reading this book.  I’ll like it even more when I con compare it to Jane Eyre.

How long has it been?  I’m ashamed of how little work I’ve done on my blog.  It has been months since I last wrote.  I actually have a backlog of ideas on my desk.  So be it.  We must begin again, and we will do so with my Seniors and their current working ideas about Wuthering Heights.

Robles:  “The complex notion of mad passion is realistically revealed in several characters of Wuthering Heights.”

Stokes:  “In Wuthering Heights Bronte offers characters who display madness and mania and create the environment to generate more of these psychological disorders.”  (Everyone is at fault.)

Hemesath:  “In Wuthering Heights Bronte reveals Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s relationship as a love poisoned by obsession and torment.”

Garcia:  “The different roles in society between Heathcliff and Catherine are the main factors that make their relationship disastrous.”

I am learning to love Wuthering Heights.  The first time I read it, I was too young to appreciate it.  The ferocious characters and their miserable rages were too dark for me to appreciate.  I failed to notice their honesty.  Maybe that’s not true.  I failed to appreciate their honesty.  I liked complicated characters, but I wanted them to be good, loving, without rage or sin.  I wanted the lovers to get together, and I never would have been able to appreciate a vision in which love was corrupted by selfishness.

Now I understand that it is only the exceptional love that is not tainted with selfishness,  the unique lover who does not fall into moody doubt and jealousy.  It’s academic, this exploration of love, academic in the best sense.  Reading Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre is diving into scholarly discussion with two superior and vast minds engaged in a discussion about the most important things in all the world.

Tomorrow I will discuss American Ninja Warriors.