Excerpt of Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver
(Page 2 of 5)
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In the long run I find it hardest to bear adversaries on the other end
of the spectrum: those who couldn't care less, who won't or can't
fathom the honest depths of love and grief, who opt out of the bull-ride
through life in favor of the sleeping berth. These are the ones who say
it's ridiculous to imagine that the world could be made better than it
is. The more sophisticated approach, they suggest, is to accept that we
are all on a jolly road trip down the maw of catastrophe, so shut up and
drive.
I fight that; I fight it as if I were drowning. When I come down to this
feeling that I am an army of one standing out on the broad plain waving
my little flag of hope, I call up a friend or two and offer to make
dinner for us. We remind ourselves that we aren't standing apart from
the crowd, we are a crowd. We're a prairie fire, a church
choir, a major note in the American chord, and the dominant one in the
song of the world: a million North American students rejecting the
tyranny of the logo and the sweatshop behind it; a thousand farmers in
India lying down on their soil to prevent its being seeded with a crop
that would steal their history and future; a hundred sheep farmers in
southern France defying a fast-food hegemony by making cheese in
limestone caves exactly as their great-grandparents did; tribal elders
from east to west inviting peace to enter the world through its Hopi
cloud dancers and its Sufi dancers; the Women in Black who stand in
eloquent silence on every continent, refusing the wars that would eat
their sons and daughters alive. We're the theater of the street, the
accurate joy of children's hearts, the literature of tomorrow's
wisdom arrived today, just in time. I'm with Emma Goldman: Our
revolution will have dancing—and excellent food. In the long run, the
choice of life over death is too good to resist.
When all else fails and I forget this, on those late nights when all the
lights have gone out on my soul, I go into my office and read the other
mail, the piles of love notes that outnumber the hateful letters two
hundred to one. (Why does praise go in one ear and out the other, for so
many of us, while we memorize criticisms verbatim? For the same reason
the radio plays two hundred songs about loneliness for every one about
family reunions. We hang our hats on heartache.) I am sustained by the
kindness of strangers, who often send me remarkable gifts from the blue:
a watercolor painting of a beloved bookshelf, a bar of handmade soap
scented with rosemary, an exquisite book on the silk moths of North
America, some precious tale of wonder or kindness, or just the
perfection of gratitude, simply expressed. I can't possibly feel alone
when so many—from prisoners to presidents, but mostly just everyday
people—have accepted my words into their lives as they would the
companionship of a friend, who say to me quietly in the park or the
grocery when I'm least expecting it, "Thank you. Keep writing."
And so I will, and when I need my own life-line of words I read Walt
Whitman, George Eliot, John Steinbeck, Arundhati Roy—people who have
understood how to look life in the eye and love it back.
I fight against the drowning, knowing I can never go into the swamp of
cynicism because if I do, I may never come out again. I'm not put
together that way. I have children who are more precious to me than my
life, and every molecule in me wants to promise them we'll get through
this. We won't blow up the world before they get a crack at doing all
the things grown-ups get to do in this howling hoot of a party: stand on
your own two feet, get your heart broken, get over it, vote, drive a
car, not drive a car, get dog-tired doing something that makes you
proud, play the radio station you want, wear your heart on your
sleeve, dance on the table, make a scene, be ridiculous, be amazing, be
stronger than you knew, make a sacrifice that matters, find out what
you're made of, cook a perfect meal, read a perfect book, kiss for an
hour, fall in love for keeps, make love, make a baby, stand over your
own naked child weeping for dread and wonder at the miracle.
Excerpted from "God's Wives Measuring Spoons" in Small Wonder.
Copyright © 2002 by Barbara Kingsolver. HarperCollins Publishers. All
rights reserved.
