It’s About Making Babies!

OK, so the movie “The Secret Life of Bees” opens Friday the 17th of October (in very limited release to only a few theaters). I saw the trailer this week at the Carmike four-plex theater in Ponca City (Eagle Eye – cross between the old “Colossus” movie and Gene Hackman’s “Enemy of the State” with a happier ending). What I noticed in the trailer was a happy Queen Latifah and what looked like a house full of love.

So I bought the book. Hastings, $14.00. “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd ($9 today at Amzon.com). I am almost 2/3rds the way through the book. And I have to wonder, “Where is she?”

Where is she?

The story, like Jenny in “Forrest Gump” by Winston Groom (different story from the PC slant of the movie, at least as good, though), like too many stories, begins with an unloved daughter. There are too many unloved sons, too, but this morning I wonder where the girl is that will fuel the devastating story of character and horror and blind arrogant bigotry five (5) years or ten (10) years or fifty (50) years from now.

My own personal revisionist history of the family

The protestant church I grew up in practiced communion – partaking of the official rite of adult-to-God sharing – for those that had celebrated the rite of “Confirmation”. About age 13.

The initial intent of compulsory education was not to educate individual children. It was to provide an educated citizenry, one capable of making reasoned decisions at the voting poll. The citizen – the adult, voting citizen – ceased to become a child with graduation from Grade 8, or age 16, whichever came first.

The average age of marriage, I am told, in the original colonies was about age 13. About the time of puberty and fertility – of ‘becoming a man or becoming a woman’ – when a child virgin crossed that threshold to partake of the adult rites of fertility and procreation.

In various times and cultures through history, children suffered horribly from lack of sanitation, lack of what we consider basic healthy environments. In some areas of the United States and the world, this is still true, and not all are homeless. As a result, infants and young children suffered appalling risks of childhood death. Note that other nations, for years now, have lower infant mortality rates than the United States.

The Roman Catholic Church at one time taught that children didn’t receive a soul until confirmation/puberty. That was one justification for abhorring child molesters, since and ‘unsouled’ child was akin to bestiality. The cultures through history that always cherished their children were few, and the modern perspective of caring deeply for each child is rather recent in historical perspective.

The stories

And so we have vestiges of the Biblical stricture that the purpose of marriage is to raise sons for God and for the army of God. We have practices, in various places, that infants are left to their mothers until “they become sensible” about age four or five, when the fathers start noticing the boys and maybe the daughters (today), to provide guidance and instruction. The ancient Greeks codified this practice, requiring each citizen to marry and produce sons for the army.

We have glimmers of enlightenment that hopefully are touching more children each generation, raising more children that are well adapted, emotionally available, compassionate and strong. But it seems this is easier to achieve for those with the luxury of time and freedom of stress – the well-to-do.

Jenny in Forrest Gump and Lilly in The Secret Life of Bees are not unique. Their parents are untaught about parenting, are hardened by life, or for some other reason – exhibited no compassion, nor mercy, nor discipline, nor respect for themselves nor the children they raise.

I try to recall, and I think it has been nearly four or five years now since the campaign got active, and subsequently replaced by other hot projects – reminding us that child abuse is passed down to future generations.

So, where is she?

Is she in an oppressed Venezuela? Is she trapped in a repressive Middle East?

Is she two houses down the street? In my nephew’s house, in foster care, working at a local store?

Where is the child that needs a refuge today?