"Memory is a way of holding on
to the things you love,
the things you are,
and the things you never want to lose."
-Kevin Arnold (The Wonder Years)
I always get a little sentimental during final exams. For me, these dreaded tests mark the end of another chapter in my life. Some chapters are more exciting than others, of course, but I have grown to cherish them all. The more I learn in my classes, the more I learn about myself. This semester, I fell in love with my Twentieth-Century Drama course. With each play we studied came new relationships in my life...relationships between my soul and people and ideals that influenced me deeply.
I felt inspired when A Raisin in the Sun's Beneatha realized that there was nothing shameful about being dependent on her family in order to make her dreams come true. One does not have to be rebellious to be great. Our achievements aren't ours, alone. They are also our family's.
My heart nearly burst when Rose Maxton stood on her front porch, took that baby from her unfaithful husband's arms, and said, "From right now, this baby got a mother... but you a womanless man" in Fences. Rose, without a doubt, completely exemplifies the idea of compassion. She is kind, patient, nurturing, forgiving, and loving. She know that all things must be nurtured in order to grow or change. And, she knew how to forgive without getting run over or giving in to fear of change or loneliness. She didn't want a fence around her house to keep people out. Instead, she desired one to keep people in. In the end, Rose learned that a fence can only stop those that are too afraid to climb.
Reading Mother Courage and her Children had a colossal impact on the way I thought about the world....about everything. When it comes to war, I have always been supportive of the brave men and women that go into battle, but I have never thought any cause was worth the brutality of war. I have always had trouble finding it in myself to hate the "enemy" and/or its troops. Everyone fighting in these battles are just human beings, like me. They have friends. They have families. They have dreams. And, they happened to live in a country involved in war, leading them to become soldiers for their countries, usually as a career move or one of financial desperation. When Mother Courage, in the final scene, looked at the emptiness and despair around her, then picked up her wagon and kept going, I had tears in my eyes. This woman had just lost all three children to this war, yet her mind was set on one mode: survival. Some people see her as a hero, a woman of strength...but, I think she is a coward. Becoming a mother means giving up a part of yourself to form another human being. If your child dies, a part of you dies, too. A mother's survival should directly depend on the survival of her children. Mother Courage stood on the battlefield in the final scene with a sense of accomplishment. She and her business had not been taken down by the war. There were no tears running down her face, but there definitely were on mine. I decided, right then and there, that my future children will never doubt the lengths I would go to for their survival. I will be a mother that would not only die for her children, but kill for them too, if necessary. We are raised to believe that one must have money to survive, and for the most part, this is true. But, most people are not reminded that money is everywhere. There is always a way to make it. And, there is no amount of it that is ever worth trading a friendship, morals, or family members for. Mother Courage had strength when she should have had faith. Mother Courage wasn't like me, though. She walked up and down battlefields every single day. She witnessed people fighting for and losing their lives. She saw up-close-and-personal how a human life is of so little value during wartime. Realizing that made me realize how lucky I have been to have never seen something so horrific that I begin to see human lives as disposable. Trust me, nothing that ever exists can do so without making a mark on someone's world.
When we studied Buried Child, every single conclusion I'd come to with Mother Courage and her Children resurfaced. That play was the most disturbing piece of literature I have ever read. Every character seemed to just live in his or her own little world. They were all disabled in some way, whether it be an artificial leg, alcoholism, deep denial and shame, or a dark secret. In the final scene, the alcoholic father's freshly dead body is seemingly unnoticed, while his son walks through the pouring rain with the corpse of a baby in his arms. He was covered in mud, the result of digging up an old grave in a heavy rainstorm. This baby was the product of incest, buried both figuratively and literally. I pictured the rain washing away the mud that covered the son and the child he was not allowed to love. For his entire life, guilt had plagued him. He'd become a quiet, bitter, and an often angry man. He could not forgive himself for something that everyone around him refused to even acknowledge. He lived life with his biggest secret laying under the very same soil from which the corn that fed and supported their family grew. In my own life, I have made decisions that caused me a lot of guilt and shame. At first, I accepted the help of others to keep my decisions private. To this day, there are things about me that nobody other than the chosen few would know. It would have been easy to keep things secret. But, I had to forgive myself. I had to lean on loved ones for support as I learned and grew from my failures, mistakes, and hard decisions. I became a better person the minute I allowed myself to let go of the shame and guilt. And, as it always does, life went on. And, I was finally able to enjoy it again. Buried Child ends without even a clue as to what happened in the days, months, or years after the day the secret was uncovered. That is the most chilling part about it all, I think... wondering if this play was a prologue or an epilogue for this family. Perhaps, it it up to the reader. If your darkest secret was revealed today, would your life end? Or, would it finally get a fresh start?
Until I read How I Learned to Drive, I doubt I would have been able to answer that question with 100% certainty. This play, which was written by Paula Vogel, was the last one listed on our syllabus. For a class to read this play and study it together, there has to be a level of comfort between the professor and the students. One's reaction to this play is difficult to hide from others, and when it comes to material as heavy as this, one learns just as much from the reactions of others as his/her own. I can say, without even the slightest doubt, that I learned how to live as L'il Bit learned how to drive. This play had no acts, but instead, changes in gears. When her grandfather responds to her statement about wanting to learn Shakespeare by saying she will get through life by the two things on her chest, she kept her head up. Her retort contained a line from The Merchant of Venice, followed by the number of the act and scene from which the line was quoted. Then, she went on living. When driving lessons from her uncle turned into sexual encounters, she traded the part of herself that society told her was most valuable for a skill in which she found feelings of pleasure and freedom. Her uncle took something from her, but he also gave her a gift: the ability to drive "like a man," as he says. She eventually went to college, but dropped out to work low-paying jobs for quick money. But, she never stopped feeling on top of the world when behind the wheel of a car. There, she was in control. She could escape. She was free... from everything. Her uncle, Peck, (related by marriage, not blood) proposed to her when she was 18. But, she refused, telling him that what they were doing wasn't right. After that, he drank himself to death, unable to move past a relationship fueled by benefits rather than love. In teaching her to drive like a man, he'd taught L'il Bit how to love like a man, how to make love like a man, and how to leave like a man. In an act titled, "Shifting from Third to Fourth Gear", L'il Bit recalls what she was once told was the "Recipe for a Southern Boy", which said:
"A drawl of molasses in the way he speaks
a gumbo of red and brown mixed in the cream of his skin
warm brown eyes- bedroom eyes
a dash of Southern Baptist fire and brimstone
a curl of Elvis on his forehead
a splash of Bay Rum
a closely shaven beard he razored just for you
large hands-
rough hands-
warm hands
the steel of the military in his walk
the slouch of the fishing skiff in his walk
neatly pressed khakis-
his heart beating Dixie-
the whisper of the zipper-
you could just reach out with your hand and...
his mouth
You could just reach out with your hand and hold him-
in your hand."
Every single time I read it, I am speechless at its beauty. This recipe contains pieces and parts of so many of the greatest men that have ever been a part of my life. I think of Brother Larry's southern drawl, Uncle Randall's hard-working hands, the way my little brother walks with his fishing rod towards the nearest creek, the way Russell's heartbeat sounds when my head is on his chest, the way my dad's face felt on the Sunday mornings of my youth... and how I thought he shaved more carefully for Jesus than he did for his clients at work. I think of my grandfather's big, warm hands holding mine as we walked across the backyard to feed the dogs so many years ago. I think of Uncle Randall's always mandatory khaki pants, and how I never saw him without them. I think of how I wouldn't have any of these things any other way.
You see, writing for me is just like driving was for L'il Bit. It makes me feel alive. It helps me escape the worries and pressures of the present. It sets me free. And, I am only able to write like I do because of the experiences I've had, the "battlegrounds" I've stood on, my dependence on my family and friends, the times I learned to forgive and still stand my ground, the people I've left standing on my front porch instead of welcoming them inside, the fences I have put up and torn down, secrets I've buried, the muddy process of digging those same secrets up, the innocence I've lost throughout the years, and the power I felt the first time I drove my car all by myself. There's something unforgettable about the way it felt to sit behind the wheel of my car with the windows down, the music blasting, and the wind blowing my hair all over the place. The world looked differently from behind the windshield, and all I had to do to escape it all was press the pedal to the floor. For the first time, I knew what it felt like to fly. And, I liked it.
Tomorrow, at 8 A.M., I will take my final exam for this course. But, I have the strangest feeling that the real test of what I've learned will come much, much later, in a classroom much larger, with classmates whose names I do not know. I think I'll pass both tests with flying colors. In fact, I just might make A's. Anything is possible.... anything.
