Abandoned Ship Revisited

In 1991 my sister Lexi visited me at college (bringing our pet turtle, Zephyra, in a shoebox on the plane... But that’s a whole nother story). She was eleven, or possibly twelve, alternately sullen and sweet. I remember taking her to a rummage sale at the Meetinghouse: she begged me for a dollar to spend, and I gave it to her somewhat grumpily, not having many to spare. And then she came back twenty minutes later and presented me with a collection of tiny glass unicorns she had bought with it -- “For you!”

After she left I started writing a poem, which I dug out the other day. It looks like I took a couple of stabs at it over several months, or maybe longer. She’d gotten to be thirteen by the time I gave up on it for good and shoved the half-dozen yellow legal-pad pages into a file folder.

Clearly I’d been reading Carol Gilligan (you couldn’t get through college back then without reading Carol Gilligan; is that still true?) and pondering her idea that during adolescence -- as they are trained to be subservient, accommodating caretakers -- girls lose their true voices.

Parts of the poem are barely past the doodle stage: there are big circled words -- TENDER, TEMPER, TEASE -- with multiple meanings radiating off them. And jotted dictionary definitions: "WISDOM: an understanding of what is true, right, or lasting." Some of it is still in the form of stream-of-consciousness paragraphs:

Some say we are all born wise, springing forth with perfect wisdom, clear vision, true voices, a pure sense of self -- which, during this dreadful adolescence, we lose track of in our eagerness to please, to fit in… leaving us lost and unsure. But it’s not just eagerness to please that robs us of our certainty.

But some parts of it had begun to take shape:

Watching my 12-year-old sister move through
her tortured adolescent day,
I think of Athena, the goddess of wisdom,
who (you may recall) sprang full-grown
from the head of Zeus, her father.

Lucky Athena -- born a grown up
full sized and fully armed,
knowing already what’s right, true, and lasting,
her wisdom unscathed by adolescence
unadulterated, pure.

Lucky Alexis -- her beanpole body,
stretching & swelling, can’t contain
her tender feelings.

***

In her swollen state she will encounter others
Their casual comments will slice her open
Her outsized reactions will provoke explosions all around

***

We tease her -- draw her up and out of herself,
by meeting her overblown feelings
with disbelief, laughter, even scorn.

It’s a cruel lesson, but she will learn
The delicate, difficult balance between
Your self and the other selves out there.
She will learn to protect herself, to build
The hard-earned armor Athena was simply handed.
She will learn to abandon certainty
To be gentle in her assertions
To embrace the rest of us.

***

Athena, sprung full-grown from her father’s head –
Can we really call her wise?

Reading this stuff now I’m amused that at twenty-one I thought I could make any kind of proclamation about wisdom. It feels pretty iffy at thirty-nine, frankly. (Don't even say it, Dr. Gilligan.)

I think I was right to point out that Athena’s brand of wisdom might be incomplete – that you do gain something by abandoning your certainty, and that there’s power in “embracing the rest of us.” But it’s still a life-long struggle, isn’t it? Finding your path, protecting your inner wisdom from compromise, knowing some things for sure and singing them out with your own true voice -- but also connecting to other people, being sensitive to their needs and open to their truths, joining a human community.

I think about how Lexi, now nearly thirty, has tied her strong convictions about what’s true, right & lasting to an equally strong commitment to empathy & community. I consider my own juggly struggle to follow my path -- to find it, even -- amidst my other commitments. I look at my daughter, about to be twelve, already entering the fray.

Her articulate exuberance, her cocky confidence, her indignation at injustice -- these Josieful things we love, that make her who she is -- are already bumping up against the people around her, pushing their buttons, bringing her grief. Our efforts to counsel her are often confusing: yesterday she told us, "People keep saying, ‘This is one of the best things about you! We love this about you! And it makes people really angry, so you need to be different!"

There, scribbled at the bottom of a faded yellow page, I find the words I want to say to her. What I wish I’d shared with Lexi at the time, what someone should have said to all of us.

You gotta go through the fire, little sister. Let your wisdom be tempered by this tortured time. Learn how to express your truth more gently. Learn when to keep it to yourself. But hang on to it, sweetheart. It’s yours. It’s what you have to offer the world. It’s what will keep you whole. Learn to hide, yes. But don’t get lost.