OMG, Ann. I feel for you, living with parents' secrets and obfuscations. On a personal level, I am thunderstruck. SHIRLEY HAZZARD! I've read only one of her novels, the glorious TRANSIT OF VENUS, but I've read it three times and urged it on a multitude of friends. Shirley Hazzard was so good, it's a wonder I didn't read any more of her novels. Perhaps I am afraid they won't measure up to TRANSIT OF VENUS.
It is the second time I read this story and it still moves me. It is beautifully written and very personal, but not overly dramatic. It touches me as I know all characters mentioned. Finding out that my father was having an affair would've been very disturbing to me and fortunately I don't think it was ever the case but who knows? There certainly was no writer that I knew who would've left written evidence and my father is now dead.
My favorite passage in this article: "We don’t shed these personas like snake skins. Rather, we grow new layers like trees."
Thank you, Ann, for this reminder: it is what I love about my life so much - all those layers - and the richness it brings up when I'm writing, the 'down times' the richest of all! Judith
Thanks for this thought provoking article. Recently I was chatting to my mum about my dad and out of the blue she said 'I wonder, if he'd lived, if we'd still be together'. The thought of them being separated before death had never ever occurred to me. Why wouldn't they still be together? I was taken aback. My mind rushed to fill in the gaps and she quickly changed the subject to fill the awkward silence.
My father was a bit of a closed book, I knew very little about his inner world. I found out more about his traumatic early life at his funeral. Sometimes I wish there had been more intimacy, more honesty but I just got accustomed to our distant polite way of being, but how much would I really want to know about him or my mother, or for that matter them about me? Sometimes the shadow has a positive protective function?
OMG, Ann. I feel for you, living with parents' secrets and obfuscations. On a personal level, I am thunderstruck. SHIRLEY HAZZARD! I've read only one of her novels, the glorious TRANSIT OF VENUS, but I've read it three times and urged it on a multitude of friends. Shirley Hazzard was so good, it's a wonder I didn't read any more of her novels. Perhaps I am afraid they won't measure up to TRANSIT OF VENUS.
It is the second time I read this story and it still moves me. It is beautifully written and very personal, but not overly dramatic. It touches me as I know all characters mentioned. Finding out that my father was having an affair would've been very disturbing to me and fortunately I don't think it was ever the case but who knows? There certainly was no writer that I knew who would've left written evidence and my father is now dead.
My favorite passage in this article: "We don’t shed these personas like snake skins. Rather, we grow new layers like trees."
Thank you, Ann, for this reminder: it is what I love about my life so much - all those layers - and the richness it brings up when I'm writing, the 'down times' the richest of all! Judith
Thanks for this thought provoking article. Recently I was chatting to my mum about my dad and out of the blue she said 'I wonder, if he'd lived, if we'd still be together'. The thought of them being separated before death had never ever occurred to me. Why wouldn't they still be together? I was taken aback. My mind rushed to fill in the gaps and she quickly changed the subject to fill the awkward silence.
My father was a bit of a closed book, I knew very little about his inner world. I found out more about his traumatic early life at his funeral. Sometimes I wish there had been more intimacy, more honesty but I just got accustomed to our distant polite way of being, but how much would I really want to know about him or my mother, or for that matter them about me? Sometimes the shadow has a positive protective function?
Layered we are... thanks for this peek into your young life. Cheers, Suzanne White