My Mother's World

I'm watching a movie I've seen before - maybe you've seen it too - "One True Thing," with Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger. Renee plays a daughter who comes home to stay with her folks when Meryl comes down with cancer. William Hurt plays Meryl's husband, who seems uninvolved and emotionally immature. In the past, I've been caught up in Hurt's character and his deficiencies, which actually turn out to be different than you're led to expect. It's a very good in-depth character and relational study worth the watch.

This time through I've been more aware of the relationship between the two female leads. Renee plays a character who wants very much to lead a different life than her home-making mother, whom she perceives as having a very small life. However, as the movie develops, you realize that her world is anything but small, especially in the way she loves and cares for her family, and the world around her.

Renee's character says (through narration) at one point, as she interacts with some of her mother's friends at a luncheon, that she didn't want to be a part of her mother's world. Instantly, I heard myself say that I would have LOVED to be a part of my mother's world, and to be included in such a life. Then, just as quickly, I realized that my mother didn't have a world, at least, not one that anyone else could have been a part of. She wasn't part of any world, really. Her mental illness consumed every thought, every moment, every memory, every relationship. Her person and her world were stolen away by a mind that could not interact with anyone in any healthy or life-building way.

I began to also realize, yet again, that some of my hermiting and reclusive ways are a consequence of being on the periphery of her non-world. Her non-world certainly helped to form the person I've become, for better and worse. I could not enter her world, nor really be part of it, thankfully. But, it would have been fun to have a mom who had a world to be a part of and a life worth desiring.

This post is not a lament, but rather an observation. God has made up to me for the deficiencies of my childhood and I am truly blessed with a number of caring and loving women in my life.

As the movie progresses, Renee's character develops a new appreciation for her mom, and new insights into her dad. All in all, I highly recommend the movie.