Eudora Welty - A Visit of Charity

 Tomorrow's story for the Eudora Welty reading group is "A Visit of Charity" from "A Curtain of Green."  The story is about Marian, a little girl and member of an organization like the Girl Scouts (but not the Girl Scouts) who visits the Old Ladies Home to gain points for her organization and her reaction to the women in the home.

The Old Ladies' Home was a large wooden structure just east of the Jackson Zoo.  My grandmother was a contemporary of Miss Welty but a few years older.  My father's mother, she was deeply involved in the Girl Scouts most of her life, and in middle age, she and a group of women she knew became very involved in helping with the Old Ladies' Home.  As time passed, the City of Jackson became less and less interested in maintaining the Old Ladies' home, so it fell on private citizens to help maintain it and provide for the residents.  

Eventually, it became really difficult to maintain the old wooden structure, and only a few residents left living there, as most people had begun using nursing homes rather than the Old Ladies' Home.  Since I was on the board of the Zoo, she asked me to help facilitate giving the land and the building to the Zoo.  I told her we didn't really need the extra five acres (and another old building to maintain), but as the City of Jackson ultimately owned both properties, I felt certain there was a way to make it happen.

Sometimes, it's hard for me to read Welty's stories from an academic viewpoint because her subject matter seems so very familiar.  She wasn't family or anything, but it's really close.  It wasn't hard to imagine my mother or grandmother as Marian, the protagonist in this story, as both had stories about visiting the residents at the Old Ladies Home, as I'm sure Miss Welty did herself.

An avid gardener, she creatively includes her beloved plants in nearly all her stories.  For this story, she mentions cineraria as a small potted plant her antagonist brings as a gift for the ladies at the Old Lady's Home.  Sometimes called "climbing fig," you see cineraria in many Mississippi gardens.

Put on by the Mississippi Archives and History and the Eudora Welty Foundation, I'm really enjoying these weekly zoom sessions to discuss the works of Eudora Welty.  Many thanks to Catherine Freis for telling me about it.  

Raising A Gifted Child

I tend to see the world through a child's eyes.  Some people would say that I'm psychologically stuck and maybe trying to work through some drama.  I don't think that's the case.  

Behind what we think we are, we're all always just ten years old--as the years go by, we add experience to that and sometimes cover some of it up.  Sometimes we cover so much of it up that there's nothing of whatever made that ten-year-old amazing still visible.  

I look at the lives of the people I find amazing.  Most are artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians, but some are lawyers, scientists, educators, and pastors.  What I notice about their lives is that, without fail, whatever became amazing about them existed and could be discerned when they were just ten years old.  

Some had parents who recognized that golden seed of what their child would become and nurtured it, fed it, and told them that if they tried hard enough and believed in themselves enough, that golden seed would one day be a beautiful tree.  Others had parents who told them that this glowing thing inside them was "very nice," but they should find something practical to do with their lives because artists are poor.  

Both of these paths were taken by parents who loved their children more than life itself.  Sometimes, children are told they must find a more practical way to live than by using their gifts. When that happens, it takes longer to discover and develop what they really are, but they almost always find a way.  

If the parent of an artistically gifted child were to ask me for advice, I'd tell them that it's ok if they don't understand the path their child is trying to take.  It's okay if they worry that the path may not support their child or wish they chose something more practical.  To borrow a quote from "Gods and Monsters," sometimes trying to raise an artistically gifted child is like being given a giraffe and expected to know how to feed and raise it.  

Just do the best you can.  If you love them, they will know.  Your child's path in life isn't meant to be easy.  That's not your fault.  You'll probably never see their work for its greatness, because all you'll see is how much you love them.    

Life is a struggle.  Love makes it more so.  By the time you've had enough experience to do a really good job of raising your ten year old, you're too old to have another one and waiting for your grandchildren to turn ten.  That's ok.  They'll forgive you.  

What I'm Reading: The Question of God

 Next week, I'm beginning to read "The Question of God" by  Armand Nicholi.  The book is a series of fictional conversations between CS Lews and Sigmund Freud.  

Armand M. Nicholi Jr. is a Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor.  The novel discusses the difficult and painful relationships that both Freud and Lewis suffered and how their experiences in life might have shaped their concept of God.  Both, having survived World War I, were said to suffer PTSD for the rest of their lives.  The book takes place shorter after Freud was diagnosed with cancer, but before he took his own life and before Lewis adopted children who were war orphans that became models for the children in the Narnia series of books.

The book was interpreted as a play by Mark St. Germain, which in turn was made into a film directed by Matthew Brown, starring Anthony Hopkins as Freud and Matthew Goode as Lewis.  Hopkins played Lewis in the 1993 film, "Shadowlands."

The Question of God by Armand Nicholi on sale at Amazon

Addams Family Mansion

 Charles Addams and his wife before College Hall, the structure at the University of Pennsylvania that inspired the mansion seen in the Addams Family cartoons.  Known as a "ladies' man," Addams married several beautiful women, none of whom were murdered.