x
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
At the end of the clip, Merideth + Matt are chatting and Merideth goes, "I don't think she'll ever find peace"
and Matt comments about how some people might say "how could you miss the warning signs"
What do you think?
and Matt comments about how some people might say "how could you miss the warning signs"
What do you think?
I think about this a lot when I look around the kindergarten classroom. I think this is one of the reasons I'm attracted to early education. You don't know what they'll become yet.
ReplyDeleteOf course there were signs. But there are signs in every child that, if read wrong, could suggest they are capable of something like columbine.
A lot of the comments my brother makes seem very violent, angry, and like he might lash out. I'm not sure at what point you ignore the sweet child you know he used to be and admit that he could hurt someone. He has as much potential to do good as he does to do bad, so confronting the bad might solidify those negative feelings.
Let me know if you read anything else about it.
the actual article by the boy's mother is in this month's O magazine. I'm thinking about buying a copy so I can read the article.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Wally Lamb's novel The Hour I First Believed. it is beautiful, heart rending, and very apropos to your topic.
ReplyDeleteThis from the Amazon page describing it:
Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).
In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.
When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.
While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.
As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.
The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.
Okay. One more. As the mother of two now grown men, I can say without a doubt that a parent most certainly can not see signs of depression, anger, fear, etc. in their children. I think that Jean-Marie makes an important point when she talks about the tension between what we know about a person's past - their history as a loving, kind, generous child -, what we see in the present and what we hope for, fear (or don't want to face) in a potential future.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine the burden of guilt this mother bears.I honestly believe that most parents (not all but the vast majority) do all they can to help their children grow into health adults. And I also believe that most parents (thanks to what we know about the critical importance of early childhood experiences -thanks Dr. Freud) are constantly looking to themselves as sources of blame for any unhappiness or difficulty adjusting/adapting/succeeding that occurs in their children, taking on much more than is reasonable. After all, children can make choices; Dylan had choices to make, too. For his mother, trying to sort out what choices he saw as available to him and what choices he was blind to that she could have, should have and wishes she'd made sure he saw must be excruciating.
Clarification - when I said "a parent most certainly can not see ...." I meant that it is possible for a parent not to see. Not that parent's can't see these things, period.
ReplyDelete