sigh!
We were the Mulvaneys
Have you ever read a book that was written for you? I am not being emotional here but i just think that “ We were the Mulvaneys “ by Joyce Carol Oats was written for me. Its a book about a family torn apart by this world’s unendurable circumstances. It is told in the perspective of the youngest son who at the present time finally understood the reasons of their family’s separation.
On valentines day, something happened to the the only girl in the family. She was raped by a senior in school on her school prom. And from that time on, their family changed. Their outlook in life and how they dealt with it changed with them. They became so distant with each other and it is as if their was a written rule not to talk about their sister who was sexually abuse.
No one in the family knew the real reason why this happen. Well, come to think about it, no one ever know the real reason for such circumstances to happen. It just happens with time. That is the most depressing part of life, things happen and one would not even recognized that it does.
There are secrets in the family. Unlike secrets that usually gets spilled, these secrets are kept until the earliest surviving descendants of the family accidental learns about from an old dairy perhaps.
The thing that bothers me the most is the fact that no matter how hard you try to accept the surface of the situations in the family, you know that something is hidden; secrets that are not meant to be learned by you. Consequently, you end up understanding things the wrong way.
It is so hard to understand something at the surface. You get cruel to the villains told from second hand story tellers. But then you see family members accepeting these witches like princesses and princes in fairy tales.
If only life is as transparent as a glass bottle, we wouldn’t be as close minded as we are today. But i guess even a glass battle has curves and shadows that you would not be able to decipher. Sigh!
