I should have learned longing from my brother's
early death--he was just shy of four years old--but I learned it instead
through books. Perhaps I was just
practical: I knew that no matter how
much I missed my brother and wanted him back, promised God I would not complain
about babysitting if he could just return alive, it wouldn't change things.
That wasn't longing because it didn't represent possibility. Dead was dead; that much I understood from my
grandparents' farm, where chickens I'd hand fed appeared on the dinner table
with regularity. I experienced grief,
but not longing.
When I first read C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
however, which I followed quickly with all the chronicles of Narnia, I knew
real longing. The word would not settle in my chest until decades later, but
the pangs were palpable then. A thrill
drilled through me: another world existed (could it be true?) where an ordinary
girl with obvious shortcomings (like Lucy's lack of faith and occasional
selfishness) could not only live but be heroic. That thrill signaled
transformation: I who didn't welcome
change (hadn't my parents divorced, my brother died, all against my will?)
would welcome it if it could mean transport elsewhere, where my worth would be
clear.
I must've felt unworthy. Unnoticed.
I do recall feeling misunderstood, the one red thread in the blue weave
of my family. I also felt odd; my love
of school and books set me apart from my mother and my sisters who, though wonderfully
tender and funny people, didn't understand how I could disappear into a book.
They would call me for dinner, saying my name over and over again, a cadence
for their steps as they approached me; I never heard until they were right next
to me. Sheepish and a mite guilty, I put down the book and took my place at the
table.
I dislike most science fiction and fantasy (an
obvious shortcoming on my part) because it takes too much mental energy to
imagine an alternate world and simultaneously keep the characters straight. In
other words, I would say now after years of training in reading literature, the
setting tends to overpower characterization.
What I thought then about Narnia
was that it was pure--a world close enough to ours to be familiar, different
enough to be tempting. The children were
like many friends I knew, and I loved that their nicknames reflected their best
qualities: Peter the Magnificent, Susan
the Gentle, Edmund the Just, Lucy the Valiant.
And there was something enticing about the fact that all of the natural
world had character, had personality--trees had spirits, animals could
talk. It touched a truth buried in me
that would grow slowly and emerge fully when I began to garden. Mr. Tumnus, the
faun, was a kind-hearted old soul who tried to do the right thing even when
though he gave into temptation and agreed to trap Lucy. In the end, his kind
heart won out. And I understood that his
weakness was just that: a weakness. I
wept when he was turned to stone and wept again in relief when Aslan breathed
him back to life. He was a person--I
didn't think of him as a character--I would be happy to know.
The books appealed to ideals I didn't realize I
had. Because of that, they represented hope. I would not have said at the time
that I lacked hope, but I was only eleven when I read the first book. Fifth grade wasn't comfortable; I was not yet
physically maturing, and I cringed when the boys eyed me and jeered,
"Flatsie." It would be four more years before I would mature,
becoming "one of them." I was
to live on the fringes for a while. On the fringes, one wonders if one deserves
the attention one is denied.
And I did--too often to admit comfortably--wonder whether
I was "worth it." That
wondering sapped my confidence. I wanted
fiercely what the books represented-- a sense of purpose, a purity of thought
and action, the ability to see the significance of my life. My life seemed fairly insignificant. Reading
the books and imagining a purpose ignited me.
Perhaps what I really wanted was a god-like view, the long view: the
view we get as we age and can see segments and phases unfold and assign meaning
to them. Narnia gave that to me; I would like to say that I understood it was
fiction, but more than once I flung open the doors to closets, hoping for an
end to my paltry life as the walls dissolved and I entered another world.
Ah, meaning.
Those fairy-tale novels got under my skin and gave meaning to something
I couldn't articulate. I guess
literature--all good literature--does that.
But the aspect of longing I reflect on now, in the middle years of my life
(I turned 50 this year) is that it must remain unfulfilled. That's why it's so painful and so exciting. If
it becomes realized, it ceases to be longing. Wanting, in other words, keeps us living.
I still want my own Narnia, a country where I am
queen without the associated condescension and arrogance.
More than that, I want to keep hoping for something to help me rise
above my own weakness and pettiness. I
want the eyes of the world to pay attention to my lowly life--so pedestrian, so
plain--and see something noble. Is that
hope a kind of faith? Maybe. And if it's false (as faith and hope may be), I
will still cling to it for it scratches where I itch. It gives me the comfort of pressure, the
knowledge that pain can give way to pleasure.
