by Ellen RM Toner
Back in 2010, I started teaching British Lit to 10th
graders. Lots of good plays, novels and poems, but far and away the thing I was
most nervous about and way over-prepared for was Hamlet. I mean, it’s Hamlet.
For the rest of their lives, or at least for a good long stretch, everything
these kids knew or thought about this play would grow out of how I showed it to
them. I was their introduction to it, and I sure as hell better not screw it
up.
Sonya is a snuggle-bug. She’ll be totally passed out
cold, and as long as you stay in the same room, preferably right next to her,
she’s good. She doesn’t really sleep at night unless one of us is holding her.
As she’s not even 5 weeks old, we figure she’s entitled to such behavior. But
what that means for us is lots of walking and rocking and singing in the wee
hours. Circling through the downstairs rooms the other night, I was singing her
one old folk song after another, and wondering if The Twa Sister Ballad,
like so many other songs I love, was maybe a little dark and depressing for a
newborn. And then it hit me. Oh my gosh. I get to teach her ALL THE SONGS. When
she grows up and goes off on her own, hopefully she’ll spend some time with
music-y people somewhere along the way, and she’ll be able to say, “Oh yeah, my
mom used to sing me that song,” and it will have sunk into her subconscious and
helped to form the way she sees the world, the way she comes to know beauty, silliness,
joy, love, and yes, sorrow. For the great
gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad / For all their wars are merry
and all their songs are sad. There are few things out there, I’d argue, so
very cathartic as a good sad song. Except of course a good tragedy (thanks,
Shakespeare!).
Last Sunday we heard the reading of the Passion at Palm
Sunday Mass, and it hit me again, as Sonya uncomprehendingly heard the words
for the first time, that one day they will be as familiar to her as they are
now to me. The rituals of Holy Week, the somber liturgies and aching meditations
on the greatest tragedy (and comedy!) the world will ever know, will all be a
part of the fabric of her life. And I wanted to wrap her up and run out of the
church, because it’s one thing to talk about the vicarious catharsis of songs
and poems, but the suffering of Christ on the cross is one that she will have
to learn to share in, to accept, to embrace, to own, or she won’t be whole. And
I have to be the one to show her that. Hamlet is so… trivial.
I’ll be honest. Even though I have 4 younger siblings and
20 nieces and nephews, I always kind of thought babies had it made. Eat, sleep,
and the giants all around you cater to you, clothe you, change you, carry you…
but wowza. Sonya has to work so hard.
Everything she does is brand-new, and most of her daily required activities
turn her entire person bright red in her straining efforts (yes, you know what
I’m talking about). She had to have a little surgery on her mouth when she was
only 5 days old, and now that her incisions have healed, we’re finally beginning
to teach her to nurse, with lots of training wheels, because her poor mouth isn’t
as strong as it should be. And I wish that there were some magic trick to make
this and everything else all easy for her, because she gets so frustrated and
angry and sad and doesn’t know why or what any of it means. But this is her
first step to learning the Cross, to becoming whole, and all I can do is try to
help show her the way forward. That’s life, kiddo. But, as I discovered after
7:23 on February 22nd, more truly and overwhelmingly than ever before, Good
Friday is always followed by the victory of Easter Sunday. It’ll all be okay,
sweet girl.
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