More phrases from "The Time Traveler's Wife" that caught my ear and set my mind to whirling:
Henry, in talking about the death of his mother, describes the incident as having great mass in his life. The greater mass an object has, the greater its gravitational pull, he explains. His mother's death—the automobile accident in which she died—is a place in time to which he returns over and over. He has looked at the accident from all angles, many times over. It is the most important event in his life.
That made me ponder what is important in my life—around what event or occurrence everything else rotates. It would absolutely be the abandonment of my birthmother that led to my adoption. The fallout of being adopted has shaped most everything about me. All my idiosyncrasies, all my fears, all my insecurities—they're all directly related to being adopted, both to the abandonment side of the adoption and to the hypercritical-adoptive-mother, "you can never be good enough" side.
I'm trying to remember if Henry travels to times and places outside his lifetime. I'm halfway through the book and the only places he's been are after his birth and previous in time to "today".
If I could travel in time within those constraints, I would go back and meet my birthmother. I'd be somehow introduced to her as a friend-of-a-friend, so she wouldn't feel threatened, and try to get to know her. I'm sure I'd also go back time and again to the wonderful three years after John and I got back together and got married. I'd try to do things better in my caregiving during his cancer battle. I'd whisper tips in my younger self's ear, tips to provide better care. And I'd find ways to touch his face and his hair and hold his hand and just stare at his gorgeous self, drinking it all in before it was gone.
Are there events in your life that are gravitational? If you could time travel in your life, where would you go?
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