Jars and stone
Once again, the Irish got it right
We have a beloved family tradition of a movie together on Sunday afternoons. We don’t have a television, so we pull out Cedar’s large monitor to attach to a laptop, and all pile onto and around our extra-long couch. There’s often some kind of special treat involved, homemade or store-bought, and it’s usually followed by nachos for supper, in order to give me a cooking break.
Two weekends ago, we watched the animated film, The Song of the Sea, put out by the same Northern Irish production studio that makes Puffin Rock, a favorite show of my littlest littles. The film came highly recommended by different people whose cultural sense I respect and trust (i.e. authors and sisters Sarah Clarkson and Joy Clarkson), and with a main character named Saoirse just like our seven-year-old, we obviously had to watch it!
And, in a word, it was utterly beautiful. The animation was highly artistic and very well-done, and obviously the Irish accents made the dialogue lovely to listen to. To tell the story, I’m going to share the quote from Joy Clarkson’s incredible book (one the top books I’ve read this year!) Aggressively Happy: A Realist's Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life, as she has a much better way with words than I do…
“I love the Irish animated film Song of the Sea. The backstory is a retelling of the Celtic myth of a warrior king called Mac Lir (“son of the sea”) and his mother, Macha, who is, inexplicably, an owl. Mac Lir suffered a broken heart and cried so much that he drowned the ocean. Hating to see her son suffer, Macha panicked and sought to stop his suffering in the only way she knew how, by turning him into stone. Head bent in grief, the giant became an island in the sea where the birds built their nests. The movie tells the story of two children who live on that island with a sorrow of their own: their mother disappeared. Their father’s heart is broken, and like Macha in the story, their grandmother is concerned, insisting they move away from the island to live with her. After being taken to the city, the children escape and try to return to the island, encountering mythical figures, dancing fairies, and old-tale spinners as they go. But as the story wears on, the atmosphere becomes less merry. The magical creatures, even the good ones, begin to turn to stone.
“The two stories become one; Mac Lir’s sorrow is the sorrow of their father, and Macha’s enchantments are the overbearing care of the grandmother. To keep the fairy from disappearing, they must speak to Macha and convince her to stop turning things into stone. After a perilous journey, they find her hidden in her magic nest, half-turned to stone herself. She is a real mess. She does not know what to do with emotion. It is terrifying to her. Each time she experiences an overpowering emotion—joy, anger, sadness—she bottles it up in a magic glass jar. Her house is strewn with little Mason jars filled with storm clouds and sunshine and red-hot fire. Stemming the tide of emotion has become an obsession. Remembering the grief of her beloved son, she would rather feel nothing than be vulnerable to the pain he endured. She makes herself into stone, impenetrable, invulnerable, safe. But if she bottles up all her sorrow, the world of fairies will turn to stone. And so will Macha.
“She must undo the curse and let her heart become flesh again, must let Mac Lir cry his ocean.”
That description of the story is what finally pushed me to watch it after hearing about it for several years. Because what a poignant storyline, and what mother can’t relate to Macha’s desire to take away her son’s pain? At our core, we don’t want our children to suffer, and sometimes we feel like we would do anything to take their pain away. But is that really what is best for our children?
The Song of the Sea sparked lots of good conversations within our family, and many thoughts have been percolating within my head about this. The movie makes it very clear that taking away emotion is detrimental to us (and mythical creatures too!), but I really appreciated the nuance kept in communicating that, because Macha was not portrayed as evil. She wasn’t maliciously trying to turn beings to stone; Macha genuinely thought that she was helping them by taking their pain away. I think that distinction is key, especially for children to be aware of, and for us as adults as we communicate with our kids about this mindset.
Children see things in black-and-white, good and evil, and so it can be hard for them to recognize toxic behaviors from people who aren’t intrinsically “bad guys”. We’ve had talks with some of our older kids about numerous interactions they had when they were younger with people they thought they could trust, and things these people said have negatively affected our kids’ beliefs going forward, often in ways they weren’t immediately aware of. As such, we’ve gotten much more careful with our younger kids in addressing toxic things said by people who wouldn’t be labeled as “bad”.
For example, a relative recently told our seven-year-old that they loved her smile and to “never stop smiling”. Though that might sound innocuous and like a kind compliment, we saw the subtle message communicating that it’s not okay to have hard or not happy emotions. Immediately after the interaction we talked with our daughter about how it’s completely normal to feel sad or unhappy, and that it’s not something that she needs to hide or avoid.
We also make sure to avoid clothing or accessories printed with slogans like “No bad days” or “Always good vibes”. Again, it’s subtle, but regular exposure to that messaging gets into children’s very impressionable minds and can cause so many problems with not knowing how to handle hard emotions. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again in the conservative patriarchal culture that we left, and so we are very careful to push back and communicate and model healthy emotional agility.
Earlier this month I was able to attend a lovely online event by Sarah Clarkson, one of my favorite authors, on “Creating a Story-Formed Home”. The main keynote talk was relating how childhood development follows the classic narrative arc (a concept further explored in her excellent book called Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children), and the section on “crisis” and teaching children about suffering through story captured the truths from The Song of the Sea perfectly.
Sarah shared: “One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is the means by which to navigate their brokenness and their loss in a fallen world…How will they navigate this sadness that comes to every person alive.” She reminds us “death and frailty are integral to what it means to be human” and that “suffering and frailty and brokenness is the condition both of the teaching of our children and of their learning. It's the condition in which children will grow to maturity. There is no escaping the brokenness of the world. So teaching children what to DO with their suffering, how to navigate their loneliness and loss, is one of the greatest gifts we can offer.”
I still remember the first time my oldest encountered meaningful death in a book he was reading. He was eight, and was reading The Poppy Series by Avi that follows a band of woodland creatures in their adventures. Near the beginning of the series, my son’s favorite character died and he was devastated. I was sitting on the floor, reading aloud to the other kids, and he came and laid his head on my leg and was just sad. He told me what happened, and I acknowledged how hard it was and comforted him. After he sat with his feelings for awhile, he got up and went on with his day.
At the time I remember being struck by the simplicity and poignancy of the moment. Life is hard, and sometimes those you love die. My son had yet to experience that personally, but in that moment, he was confronted by the brokenness of the world. Though there wasn’t a lot of conversation about it then (there has been much more in the years since as he confronts harder realities), he was still learning how to navigate his suffering. Because sometimes that navigating looks like just acknowledging and sitting with your feelings.
Contrasted with that was a very different experience from around the same time. While we were looking through books together, a young woman I know shared with me that most of what she read in her growing-up years were stories without suffering, where everything was always happy and positive. Any hardship was minor and circumstantial (versus emotional), and very quickly resolved with an accompanying moral lesson. She admitted that reading only that type of book did a very poor job of preparing her for the life she was now living, as a young wife and new mother. I empathized with her as I have seen many books like that as they are strongly pushed in conservative Christian circles, and I could see how they could leave you woefully unprepared for real life.
(A related aspect of this I’ve recently been pondering now that I have teens is that of the place of books with romance in them. I’m on multiple bookish mama Facebook groups, where moms are regularly asking for book recommendations for their children based on different interests, preferences, etc. A common note I see in these requests, even and especially with those for teens, is “no romance, please!” The logic I’ve heard supporting that preference is that you don’t want teens to be focused on romance and relationship and “give them ideas”.
I can tell you right now: your teen is already thinking about romance. It’s extremely normal and appropriate and how God designed it for teens to start thinking about romantic relationships, being attracted to the opposite sex, etc. So instead of ignoring that or squashing it, what if we viewed it as another complicated area of life that we can help prepare them for with story? With my teens, I give them certain books with romance on purpose to give them examples that help to model a healthy approach to romance and relationships. And I’ve already had direct feedback from my teens as to how helpful that has been. Just something to think about…)
In summary, from the mama with literal thousands of books: give your children stories about real life. Life that is gritty and complicated and happy and hard and sad and funny. Full of love and light and betrayal and darkness and laughter. As parents, it hurts us to think of our children having to endure pain and suffering, but as humans in a fallen world, it’s inevitable. Let’s use story to make sure they’re ready to navigate it with grace and hope, taking their place in God’s larger story of redemption.