True Life Stories:
THE ONES WHO WEREN'T
The Follow-Up
Added on March 30, 2006
Dear Friends,
I don't make a habit of inundating those on my website mailing list with daily reports, but for those of you who may have read my piece in Salon.com yesterday -- and the avalanche of angry response it inspired among (mostly anonymous) Salon readers, I wanted to provide a follow up.
I tend to say that the condemnation I experienced at the hands of my critics after the publication of my memoir, At Home in the World, permanently cured me of the aspiration to seek or find approval from those inclined to judge. And to a surprising degree, this has been true. Still, I won't pretend that I remained totally invulnerable to the kinds of attacks on my character that spewed forth on Salon in response to that essay of mine, on miscarriage and abortion. It 's a creepy feeling, reading one individual after another (people who have never met me) talk about me as a soul-less "breeder" and weigh in on my many failings--all of which they have learned about from my own writing.
I don't dwell on this stuff. But today, my longtime friend and colleague, the writer Jacquelyn Mitchard, weighed in on Salon with some observations of her own. And because what she is really talking about is more than just whether or not I'm a bad person--but in fact, the question of the forgiveness all of us might seek to acquire, for those prepared to explore not only their own glorious successes, but their human failings--I wanted to share with you what Jackie wrote.
My friend's letter addresses the question of why so many readers seemed so ready to condemn me for my story. But really, what she's talking about is why we, as a culture, remain so ready to condemn those who presume to acknowledge their vulnerabilities and shortcomings. I would like to think that what I seek to instill in my children--and what I look for in my friends, a partner, or the inhabitant of the Oval Office--is the capacity to say "I made a mistake."
And to learn from that. And go on from there.
So here comes Jackie Mitchard. A terrific writer, mother (and adoptive parent) and precious friend:
WHY DO PEOPLE HATE JOYCE MAYNARD'S EVERY WORD?Only twice have I taken to my computer keys to write to Salon; and both times, it has been to defend Joyce Maynard -- a good person, a good writer, a good friend and an occasional nut.
The first was to remind those who excoriated her temerity in writing about "he who must not be mentioned," J.D. Salinger, that Mr. Salinger was not the sold custodian of every experience in which her participated.
So many writers were eager to grant him that imperious desire, his majestic reticence.
Joyce violated the quit-claim women are, I guess, expected to sign when they become involved with reclusive genius.
Maureen Dowd, who has probably done a few things with a few folks that would have made for spicy reading had she jotted them down, called her Joyce a "leech woman."
Others clamored to agree.
And now, there are letters from the righteous about a woman who, not once but twice, wanted a child and regretted the decision to end the potential for that child to live.
There are letters from people who ponder overpopulation daily.
There are letters from blissful folk who have never done an important thing without the utter complicity and blessing of their spouses.
There are letters from those who prescribe Rogerian therapy for Joyce -- who may discuss in therapy what Joyce writes about with brutal honesty, that being the American way.
There are letters from those who think that adopting a child (especially for a middle-aged woman with a fluctuating income) is no more difficult than a trip to Target.
There are letters from people who point out that since they were unable to have more than one child, Joyce should have kept her ambivalent wish for five to herself.
There are those who would smite her for fulfilling her need for personal happiness through her relationships with her children instead of with her spouse or her very happy-to-be-free-and-me self.
There's even one who writes "ICK" in mocking her wish to bury a piece of her body's own tissue.
All but a couple then sign with silly little handles such as "old n'wise" or "oughta know better" rather than their own names.
For them, I have a question.
WHO the hell are you?
Have you never wavered in the face of desire because so-called "cooler" heads prevailed? Have you never longed for something that you denied yourself in the (usually) misguided belief that it would bind you closer to another person, or at least spare you that person's wrath? Have you never experienced two very different and conflicting emotions? Have you never wanted to cry yourself a river, even though you knew "the world" might consider your reasons for that foolish?
Have you never wanted anything you didn't need?
I, for example, only need three pairs of shoes -- one for summer, one for winter, one for working out. But I'm glad I have twenty.
I only (reasonably) needed (if I needed this at all) one child, to fulfill my genetic destiny.
Yet I produced a few and adopted several more. I love them each and all tenderly, support their schooling to a reasonable degree -- to the degree at which it becomes their responsibility -- and have given them my best self and my worst self as well as the inestimable gift of each other.
And that is nobody's business but my own, although I make no secret of it.
Though, from having written essays for years, I know that people's fingers point only one way, I suspect it is because Joyce externalizes all those guilts and griefs the rest of us like to pretend we are too sane and stoic even to entertain that she makes readers "uncomfortable." She doesn't feel sorry for herself.
She only feels sorry.
She feels sorry that she didn't have the chance to be an "older n' wiser" mother, or find a man who wanted to pay her the ultimate biological accolade of wanted to protect her and their child, sorry she couldn't -- economically or emotionally -- do it on her own. In this case, "it" was having or not having a child. In other cases,"it" has other names.
It is the road not taken.
In this, Joyce is different only in one way from almost everyone else.
She admits it.
Perhaps, instead of writing a real-life essay, she should have written a novel about a woman who killed a baby when she might have raised that baby or given it to a nice couple or run away with the baby or discussed the baby with a Rogerian therapist or with the man who caused her to become pregnant. Perhaps she could have written a novel about a woman who ended the life of a child she truly would have wanted, under other circumstances.
Perhaps she might have done that and called it something other than 'THE ONES WHO WEREN'T.'
Perhaps she might have called it 'BELOVED.'
Jacquelyn Mitchard
RECOMMEND JOYCEMAYNARD.COM TO A FRIEND
