The next best thing to not having read a book I meant to read, is the surprise when it's made into a film. It's how I came to know the story of Where'd You Go Bernadette?
We enter the story on the assumption that Bernadette is a hopeless character. She can't sleep nor function outside the fence she's built around her. She's an antagonistic neighbor and indifferent to the dilapidated state of her home. She depends on a foreign online connection to run her tasks of motherhood and housewife.
Yet slowly, the story unfolds and we see Bernadette was once a brilliant and celebrated architect. But the birth of a daughter with health problems takes Bernadette from her career. She is so wrapped up in caring for the child's life, she forfeits her own...and now that child is going away to college.
The pace of Bernadette unraveling quickens, but it's a movie with a required (thank goodness) happy ending, and soon Bernadette figures out the problem and returns to her former productive self.
The problem was that Bernadette quit creating.
An inherent need in human beings is to create. We descend from the greatest creator ever; it is only natural that we would need to create.
Creation is cleaning to create a pleasant environment; cooking to nourish the body and soul; organizing to find order. Lawyers create documents, psychologists create space for mental clarity. Doctors create, solve, and treat. A grandparent creates relationships with grandchildren. A social worker once told me that young girls will sometimes get pregnant when basic needs aren't met and they are in survival mode. At the the lowest and most desperate time, creation of another human being overrules the consequences that will be so difficult later on.
If I am out of kilter, I can climb out of the pit by serving others--another from of creation.
My daughter has an entire shelf of paints, paper, string, scissors, glue, stickers, always accessible to her children. They are always creating, whether in play with one another or in tie-dying black shorts.
The movie's happy ending? Bernadette disappears to Antarctica (it's a movie) where she learns a new ice station design is needed. The mere possibility of fulfilling her creative talents brings her out of her deep funk, and the station ( which she eventually creates), is another architectural wonder.
We enter the story on the assumption that Bernadette is a hopeless character. She can't sleep nor function outside the fence she's built around her. She's an antagonistic neighbor and indifferent to the dilapidated state of her home. She depends on a foreign online connection to run her tasks of motherhood and housewife.
Yet slowly, the story unfolds and we see Bernadette was once a brilliant and celebrated architect. But the birth of a daughter with health problems takes Bernadette from her career. She is so wrapped up in caring for the child's life, she forfeits her own...and now that child is going away to college.
The pace of Bernadette unraveling quickens, but it's a movie with a required (thank goodness) happy ending, and soon Bernadette figures out the problem and returns to her former productive self.
The problem was that Bernadette quit creating.
An inherent need in human beings is to create. We descend from the greatest creator ever; it is only natural that we would need to create.
Creation is cleaning to create a pleasant environment; cooking to nourish the body and soul; organizing to find order. Lawyers create documents, psychologists create space for mental clarity. Doctors create, solve, and treat. A grandparent creates relationships with grandchildren. A social worker once told me that young girls will sometimes get pregnant when basic needs aren't met and they are in survival mode. At the the lowest and most desperate time, creation of another human being overrules the consequences that will be so difficult later on.
If I am out of kilter, I can climb out of the pit by serving others--another from of creation.
My daughter has an entire shelf of paints, paper, string, scissors, glue, stickers, always accessible to her children. They are always creating, whether in play with one another or in tie-dying black shorts.
The movie's happy ending? Bernadette disappears to Antarctica (it's a movie) where she learns a new ice station design is needed. The mere possibility of fulfilling her creative talents brings her out of her deep funk, and the station ( which she eventually creates), is another architectural wonder.
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