To Truly Live

In another world, Ruth and Jane are fighting the battle of what to believe in. Fear can be stable for only so long before it gets exhausting, boring, endless, and hopeless. Even Bill feels that pull in his heart, but as he wages a war against foreign thoughts and feelings inside, he becomes more forcedly happy or optimistic on the outside. A life of little to no variation takes its toll on those who dream of what life could be. The simple possibility of more or different controls their thoughts and provoke secret exploration.

In this story, you see Jane's change from supportive and believing in her husband, along with what he stands for, into a lonely, dazed, stuck-in-time lady who is clinging to her known and trusted repetition. "Wandering, she strolls along the grit-worn sidewalk, stares at stars through holes in the Kmart awning. This way it all looks black up there, the occasional star the rarity" (pg 88). A picture of what her life has become, Jane wonders when a 'star occasion' will happen to her. When will life stop revolving around fear of the unknown?

When she finds her daughter flirting with Hector, fear is absent in her reaction. "This is a careless spirit Jane Has forgotten. As she sees them whisper, she remembers a time before Bill, and tries to read her daughter's lips" (pg 89). I would challenge to say that 'careless' is really the actual living of life and risk and possibilities. She probably was that girl who could do anything and was afraid of nothing. But then she met Bill, who most likely convinced her of the terrifying state of the world and led to a boxing-up of adventure and true hope of what could be. Instead, she became a woman who feared until fear let her down for the uneventful present could not be as happy or calming as her past. She is downright depressed and needs something or someone to yank her out of this nightmare of boredom.

Ruth, on the other hand, is ahead of her mother. She is pondering the what-ifs and asking hard questions. Maybe a bit slow-moving, but definitely more of a fire about her. I see the following two lines to be a description of her own life = "Stupidly waiting under the Styrofoam-coat hanger model of the solar system you reach up and set it in motion. But the hand-colored planets swing too smoothly it seems to you, too safely Halverson would say, and plucking Pluto from the mix sets the model wildly spinning" (p 95).

When it all comes down to it, Jane and Ruth's want to truly LIVE life is in fact their need and desire for real relationships full of vulnerable love and open hearts. Ultimately they (we; all Americans; all human beings) desire relationships that are more than just habits and sex, but that knowing the honest hopes and dreams of another - and opening up to them about yours - can be the fulfilling adventure that brightens and livens one's life.