Growing up & holding the tension between responsibility and hope

Book Club: ATGIB Chs 42-49

Aug 22, 2021

Hello again.

I’ve talked to many of you one-to-one these last couple of weeks and it’s evident we all are feeling the weight of summer at this point. The fresh hope of June has now changed to the slog of August as we wait for cooler temps and a return to some sort of routine that comes with the school year, even if we aren’t students. I don’t know about you, but September has always felt like a January 2.0 to me. In the midst of all we have going on, we’re making our way. Hang in there.

This week my lovely friend Heather wrote our reflection and I so appreciate the perspective she brings to the table. Heather is one of the most inclusive, compassionate, and merciful people I know, and she extends her generosity of spirit and resources to everyone in her orbit. She’s also a mother to four children who are my godchildren. They live in Kansas City, and I’m so excited that we will hopefully be able to see each other more soon. Anything will be an increase from the last 5 years while we were abroad, right??

Find a cozy place to sit if you haven’t already & enjoy the read. And remember, next week is our final book club post; it’s been a long time coming but we’re nearly there. I hope you can join me for the live chat (which won’t be dependent on having finished the book).

(PS - On an editorial note, I’ve gone back to change the titles of each of these posts to reflect the chapters rather than the week [lol] so that they’re easier to find if you ever want to come back to them when you finish the book. 😉)

Burrelles: More than Just “The Clipping People” | Medium.com

Chapter 42 starts as Francie and Neeley graduate grade school, and it’s evident Katie is feeling all the emotions. I recognize that we are supposed to be following Francie’s storyline, but I was really taken with Katie during this chapter. In the world of spenders and savers, it is pretty evident that Katie is a saver. But on this evening, we see her deviate from this pattern to celebrate her children’s accomplishments. When the waiter brought Katie the bill she pays it and leaves a generous tip. Her action is met with a quick groan from Neeley and a verbal rebuke from Evy.

“Katie, Katie, how foolish, “protested Evy. “I bet it’s your last money, too.”
“It is. But it may be our last graduation, too.”

The discussion continues between Katie, Evy, Francie and Neeley. After some more debate, Katie says, “I don’t care. For once I wanted us to feel like millionaires. And if twenty cents can make us feel rich, it’s a cheap price to pay.”

I wonder if you can remember a time growing up when your parent or other caregiver acted in a way that was “extra fun” or seemingly out of character for them. This doesn’t have to necessarily be a monetary occasion. For me, my kids will be the first to tell you that I am not in any way what you would classify as a “fun” mom. It is a role I have accepted for myself because it is what is needed for my family, and so in that way, I really relate to Katie’s parenting role. But every once in a while, I just get tired of being so serious all the time, and I want to feel carefree and not worry about money, budgets, doctor’s appointments or adulting in general. I want to truly celebrate LIFE without the heaviness that so often accompanies it. That is what I sense from Katie in this chapter. She is overwhelmed with the desire to LIVE… even for a night.

Francie continues through adolescence as she enters a new phase of life and she and Neeley get their first full-time jobs. Finances have been very tight since Laurie was born, and Katie is juggling more balls than ever before. Francie and Neeley are both working to help provide for their family, but they don’t have working papers which means they have to lie about their ages. This fact is something that will greatly influence how Francie and Neeley seem to grow up rapidly and lose the last remnants of childhood. In some ways it seems that Francie and Neeley are proud to be able to help their momma financially.

Life is going a bit more smoothly from a monetary standpoint. At the same time, we see Francie having moments of panic realizing that the job she works could be the rest of her life. When she is working a flower stemmer in a factory she has one such moment where she thinks,

“This could be a whole life…You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.”

I wonder if you’ve had moments where you’ve had similar thoughts. Is this the best life is going to get? Surely, there is more to life than this.

Fortunately, Francie doesn’t have to worry about that job for long since the layoff came. Francie takes this opportunity to pursue a different kind of work. I love that we see her developing into a risk taker. This is her chance to change her life course. She always hoped to travel across the bridge and work in New York City. She is ultimately hired as reader at the Press Clipping Bureau in New York City, and she quickly began to climb the corporate ladder. Along with that work comes much better pay and her dream of traveling over the bridge is fulfilled.

However Francie is soon disappointed by the city, and she wonders if all new things will be disappointing from this point forward. Again, we see that childhood dreams and fantasy are being replaced with reality, expectations and pressures. One of the things that I noticed was that we see Francie establishing personal boundaries between her work life and her personal life. She will not report to work earlier than she has to, and she leaves when her work day is done. I hope she continues carrying those boundaries through the rest of the book.

Francie still desperately wants to go back to school, but it’s decided that Neeley will go instead. Francie doesn’t understand why she can’t go when Neeley doesn’t want to. This leads to the first real argument between Francie and Katie. Francie expresses a lot of the frustrations that have been building about her mother’s perceived favoritism of her brother. Katie says that she doesn’t have to worry about Francie because she can trust Francie, and she knows Francie will do what she sets her mind to. Francie inwardly reflects and ultimately apologizes, and they appear to reconcile. However, in their hearts they both know that this argument will forever change the relationship dynamic between them.

Lastly, in these chapters we see Francie have a significant moment of spiritual transcendence. Through most of the book so far, we see Francie pushing away from Catholicism and seeing religion as something that isn’t necessarily for her. The struggles of her family and the death of her father left her angry with God. However, at Christmas mass, she has what I would classify (in my non-theological brain) as a conversion moment. She believes with all her heart that Jesus died as a sacrifice for her and that Jesus was there with her in that exact moment. She didn’t understand it all, and she found great beauty in the mystery of God and Jesus and she believed with her whole heart. I am curious to see how her faith continues to grow in the rest of the book.

Heather’s captured the ongoing tension we’ve come to recognize in Francie. She is caught between dreams and responsibility, hope and despair, certainty and doubt. If we again consider spirituality as relationship, spiritual care as something that nurtures those relationships, and those relationships being intertwined and having an affect on one another…

I wonder how Francie’s frank conversation with her mother will impact her faith and sense of God. I wonder if you can make any connections with how your relationship with your own caregivers informs your faith, too?

Viriditas

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