I have just completed The Child Who Never Grew. And like any good book, it leaves me musing about things in my own life. It was a good book.
I'm always thinking through a book when I read it. What was the author like? What was the social climate in her day? What haunted her? What compelled her? I even imagine the author's surroundings when she wrote the book. I can't explain why my mind travels in these directions, it just does.
A Taste:
On the overwhelming sorrow Buck felt over her daughter's disability:
"My common sense, my convictions of duty, all told me that I must not let the disaster spoil my own life or those of relatives and friends. But common sense and duty cannot always prevail when the heart is broken. My compromise was to learn to act on the surface as much like my usual self as possible, to talk, to laugh, to seem to take in interest in what went on. Underneath the rebellion burned, and tears flowed the moment I was alone."
The Chinese culture, in which Buck and her daughter lived, were astounded by the Western traditions regarding family and Buck's decision to place her child in an institution.
"The Chinese home is stable and it continues in the same house from generation to generation. All generations live under the same roof and are mutually responsible for and to one another."
"They could not believe that I had no such home even in my native land. My relatives were strange to me, since I had grown up far from them..."
"Ours [America] is an individualistic society, indeed, and the state must do for the individual what family does in the older civilizations."
A conversation with a headmistress at an institution Buck visited. The woman had just finished telling Buck that she had to teach the "feeble minded" not to be an embarrassment to their families.
"Why do you do it?" I asked
"I have to make a living" she said honestly enough.Buck, after the visit, concluded:
"Of course we must all live, but it is amazing how easy it is to find bread when one does not put it first."
"But beyond space and a minimum of cleanliness and care, I began to look for the right people, people who were warm and human."
Buck relied heavily on her own independence when it came to the business of taking care of her child.
"Independence had taught me that the important thing was to know what I wanted. Then I could always find a means to get it. This habit of mine held."
I can relate to this. This isn't necessarily a virtue. I still struggle with my desire to remain independent and be the wife and mother God calls me to be. I find my independence is all to easily intermingled with my pride and my desire to be alone.
"I was young, I was strong, I was well educated. With those three gifts, I could provide somehow for the child."
This was the impetus for Buck's writing. Her first marriage failing, she went alone to the states in search of a suitable institution for her daughter. Her husband, Lossing Buck, is never mentioned in her narrative. It isn't until the end of the book, in the Afterward, that her oldest adopted daughter, Janice C. Walsh, sheds light on the effect Buck's determination had on the rest of the family:
"Unfortunately, she was reaching out to so many, there were times that my mother could not be there for her own family. Although she provided for our material needs, she often did not have the time to take care of our emotional needs...And even when she had time to spend with us, I often felt that she lived in another world from ours, and did not really understand simple, everyday family life...She placed intellectual pursuits above all else, and since none of us were particularly intellectual, I guess we were disappointments to her in a way."
Ms. Walsh does not disparage her mother in her short memoir, rather, she speaks as a daughter who has reconciled with the past and seeks to understand Buck's struggle.
While this book is short and easy, Buck makes it a rich read with her frank honesty. If she employed the same writing style in her other works, she will make for nice Sunday afternoon reading.
