Weekend Guide: 06.18.2021
Todo Terminó
Lots of novels try to capture the feeling of youth. Most fail. Adults forget how it feels to be a kid. We adults have memories of childhood. But as we fade slowly into the grey of old age - tapping into the emotions of childhood becomes increasingly hard.
What we adults forget is the magnitude at which everything hits when you’re a kid. The small things feel big. The big things feel even bigger. We obsess over minutiae. We are fragile, impressionable and easily scarred. Babes in the woods.
We get bigger, start making money, gain some perspective (hopefully), and the seemingly endless days of childhood come to us only in fractures. We piece them together as best we can, but our memories are the stories we tell ourselves. The past is the past. We all know it is gone forever. Todo Termino.
The Mountain Lion by Jean Staffford (1947) is the first novel I have ever read that captures the emotion of childhood. Hopeful ignorance. Blind idealism. Seething rage.
Molly and Ralph are brother and sister. They live in a pristine suburb of Los Angeles. One summer they are sent to their uncles ranch in the backwoods of Colorado. They start to make regular return trips — enjoying an exciting double life. Once inseparable, the lessons they learn in Colorado slowly strain the ties that bind, until they eventually break.
This is a very specific type of novel. Complicated and painstakingly slow at times. As a reader you never quite feel comfortable. It feels like you are breathlessly working your way up a hill, imagining the summit just out of view 🧗♀️ . The other shoe about to drop. Watching a car crash in slow motion from the brutal luxury of an overpass.
If you want something easy/breezy, The Mountain Lion is not for you. If you are searching — or if you want to remember what it’s like to feel emotions so deeply you could scream — it may be worth picking up.
The beauty of growing up is that we can use our experiences as context. Everything starts to matter a little less. We’ve seen the movie before. Our edges dull. By no means do I think I am stating anything profound. This is a shared experience.
Maybe it would do us all a little good to remember how to experience life through the eyes of a kid. Get excited. Laugh until your stomach hurts. Love someone so much you could cry. Live, laugh, love baby. Because we all know how the novel ends.
Thank you to my brother for digitizing every photo in my parents house and uploading them to the big cloud in the sky. If you want to talk about books, you can always email me. I enjoy hearing from you. I say this with peace and love. ✌️ ❤️
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