Fictional motherhood patterned some of the ways I raised my children.
The children would pause at the front door when they returned from school if they heard loud classical music.
They’d scan my face and ask, “is someone coming over?”
If the music was something particularly dramatic, like Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries, or possibly worse, Tchakovsky’s 1812 Overture, the odds plummeted I was cleaning for company.
Which usually meant only one other option: I was angry.
I always cleaned to classical music, particularly if I needed a constructive outlook for my fury, but it was only years later I realized why.
That’s exactly what Mrs. Austin did in Madeleine L’Engle‘s Meet the Austins.
During one child’s birthday party, my husband took everyone to the movies and I stayed home to “get things ready,” for the sleepover to come. Since I had a couple hours to myself, I painted the front and back doors of the house.
In the middle of a birthday party.
Later, I realized that’s exactly the type of thing Mrs. Belford would have done in the Katie Rose series by Lenora Mattingly Weber.
The Sound of Music
The summer my daughter turned eight, I realized she had never seen The Sound of Music, so I went to Blockbuster Video to rent a copy. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I asked the young pierced man behind the counter. He started typing, “Sound of what?”
“The Sound of Music.” I spoke slowly and enunciated everything with care.
“Music?” he looked puzzled.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of The Sound of Music.”
“Nope.”
So help me, I turned into Woody Allen and addressed the middle aged man behind me in line. “You’ve heard of The Sound of Music, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” he grunted. “Chick flick.”
The clerk shook his head.
So I became Julie Andrews and broke into song: “Doe, a deer, a female deer.”
The female clerk behind the counter joined me and I only wish, now, I’d danced through the video aisles with my arms outstretched as we got more and more enthusiastic.
Paralyzed at his screen, the male clerk watched with his mouth open. I suppose this was a two-woman flash dance . . .
Motherhood
The point of these stories is to show how fiction has affected my life and my mothering in unexpected ways. When I read and reread those YA books by L’Engle and Weber as a lonely teenager, I had no way of knowing how they were imprinting me and thus my own family. The musicals I loved added music and joy to my life.
I didn’t wake up one morning as an adult and think, “I’m going to clean house to classical music because that’s what Mrs. Austin did.”
I just did it because it made sense.
It still makes sense.
The children laughed, ran away, danced or ignored me, but I enjoyed myself.
Raising them well–introducing them to great music, books and movies–is what motherhood is all about.
No matter who you use as a pattern!
Tweetables
YA novels serving as mothering examples? Click to Tweet
A Madeleine L’Engle pattern for motherhood. Click to Tweet
A mom runs a solo Sound of Music flash mob. Click to Tweet
I clean when I’m angry too. Which means my house is a mess. I guess that’s a good thing. I could’ve stood in the video store and sang the whole score with you!
Absolutely. There is some dark stuff that’s very good (for example, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux stories) but I have to be in the right place to attempt it.
As a side note, it was a sad day when my 10 y/o told me I was going to have to sopt singing and dancing in the grocery aisle (to Muzak) because it was embarrassing. 🙂
I default to cleaning when I’m angry too. Or scared.
In reading, I tended to retain more what I did NOT want to do or be like. (Ex: I absolutely was not going to have nerves like Pride & Prejudice’s Mrs. Bennet!)