Finding Your Words

Any parent can attest that one of the major highlights of being a parent is getting to share your passions with your child. In our house, there is a constant conversation about our favorite movies, and how old Aleck has to be to really enjoy them. When we showed him The Sound of Music for the first time a few months ago he loved it so much he even sat still on the couch during the “intermission” and often references the movie during everyday conversation. He was definitely bummed to hear about the passing of Captain Von Trapp. Since Aleck is an avid reader, reading books with him at night has been an adventure together. We started reading Harry Potter a few years ago, and he made me do all the different accents of Harry, Ron, Hermoine, and Hagrid, even though I do terrible British accents. This summer we read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer together and Aleck was in a fit of laughter during the scene when Tom and Huck show up at their own funeral. Together we dove into the past of everyday America devouring a large portion of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series, we still have a few more books left to go. When we headed up to our friend’s gorgeous cabin in Michigan this winter I took a chance and brought only two books for Aleck to chose from for our next reading adventure; The Long Winter, another LIW series book, and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I had tried to push The Secret Garden on Aleck before, he had started it in first grade and found it boring pretty quickly. But when I pulled out my copy of the book, a discarded library copy that I got from my local library when I was in the 6th grade, he agreed to give it a try. Within the first couple of chapters, we were completely transported to this beautiful Yorkshire moor and could feel the cold air streaking across our faces.

We were about halfway through the book when I found myself starting to lose interest. I started to wonder why I loved this book so much anyway. It was dragging on a bit, the main character was developing and growing, but there wasn’t much else happening. She had found the garden pretty easily, it seemed to me, and I started to worry that Aleck wasn’t going to enjoy this jewel of a memory from my childhood like I did. Then, the main character, Mary, discovers her first cousin, both of them 10 years old, who was locked away in his room from the rest of the world. Did I mention that I’m about to spoil a big part of this book for you? Well, it was written in 1911 so if you haven’t read it yet…you probably won’t. Mary’s cousin, Colin, has spent his life in bed. When he was born the doctors pronounced him an “invalid”, that his legs were crooked, that he would develop a hump on his back like his father, and that he was probably going to die any day now. Having been waited on hand and foot since birth, having people stare at him and talk about him behind his back, this made Colin a very angry and spoiled child with a temper so bad he’d regularly work himself up into a fever. Mary, who was also known for her temper and was spoiled in her previous life in India, was a perfect match for Colin. She tells him all about The Secret Garden, the garden that belonged to his mother who passed away when he was a baby. Eventually, she arranges for Colin to be brought in his “wheeled chair” out into the garden, as the weather gets warmer. As readers, we watch as Mary, Colin, and their friend Dickon work to bring the garden back to life. We see Colin’s appetite increase as he’s getting fresh air for the first time in his life. Then we see him take his first steps in that garden, realizing that there is nothing wrong with his legs, that there is no hump on his back, and as I’m reading I’m wiping the tears away from the corners of my eyes as Aleck is next to me, cheering out loud for Colin, rolling and laughing in his bed, so genuinely excited for this fictional boy.

When I got The Secret Garden I had been very sick with mononucleosis, I was 10 years old at the time, and I had been hospitalized in the ICU for a week with liver and spleen complications. One of the clearest memories I have from being in the hospital is watching my Uncle Larry put on a disposable yellow gown, a face mask, and gloves so he could come in the room to visit me. There was a chance my spleen could burst at any moment, which would have killed me, so I was under very careful surveillance, they weren’t taking any chances. After I got home I was so weak I could barely walk up the stairs to my bedroom, where I stayed for about six months. One day my mom decided to drag me out of the house and we went to the library to find some books to occupy my time, there’s only so many reruns of I Love Lucy and Leave It To Beaver one girl could take. As an adult, I can’t bear to watch a single episode of either of these shows. I saw that tired red binding sitting in the discard cart and was drawn to how old the book was, I saw some beautiful illustrations inside and decided to take it home with me. I had forgotten all of this when I started reading to Aleck, I had forgotten how the parallels of Colin’s life and my own at the time, were so comforting, as I sat in my bed wishing I had a Secret Garden to help make me strong again too.

This book has sparked all kinds of conversations between Aleck and I, at the time of the day when the most important conversations happen, right before bed. Aleck gets angry when I read the word, “invalid.” He’s not sure how to take it. With Tom Sawyer we talked a lot about the word, “nigger” and with every book written before these modern times we end up talking a lot about the word, “queer” which was very popular in literature for decades. We talk about why it’s in the books we are reading, what it meant to those people at the time, and what it means to people today, how we can’t use it in everyday conversation, and how people are offended and hurt by these words. Aleck tells me the word “invalid” has the same effect on him, it hurts him to hear that word, even though this was really the first time he had heard it. We also discuss the word, “cripple”, used in the book as well, and he doesn’t like that one any better. I turned to Aleck and I said, “people are going to use all kinds of words to describe you. It’s up to you to decide which words you want them to use. If they are a friend and they use a word that hurts you, it’s important to let them know that you don’t like that word. If they stop using it, then they are definitely a friend.” This has prompted us to talk about what words he would like people to use. I told him how I use the phrase, “muscle disorder” a lot. Then I asked him how he felt about the word, “disabled.” He doesn’t like that one either, and neither do I even though it’s a perfectly acceptable word that has been embraced by the disabled community. It’s also a word that opens doors for our family, that explains quickly that Aleck needs more physical help than his peers, but it carries such weight with it that it took me eight years to use it (see blog post here) and I still can’t say it comfortably. Aleck will need to come up with his own phrasing of who he is and what he needs to succeed. Being stuck at home for almost a year now, we haven’t run into the staring strangers on the playground, so he hasn’t needed to explain why he is who he is to some curious kiddo in the ‘hood. But reading books like this definitely helps to open these conversations and I’m confident that one day he will figure out what words work best for him.