Thursday, July 22, 2010

Identifying with Eudora

I couldn't help but think of myself and my eldest daughter as I read this in Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings . . . 

"It seems likely to me now that the very element in my character that took possession of me there on top of the mountain, the fierce independence that was suddenly mine, to remain inside me no matter how it scared me when I tumbled, was an inheritance. Indeed it was my chief inheritance from my mother, who was braver. Yet, while she knew that independent spirit so well, it was what she so agonizingly tried to protect me from, in effect to warn me against. It was what we shared, it made the strongest bond between us and the strongest tension. To grow up is to fight for it, to grow old is to lose it after having possessed it."

And then I identified with Miss Welty again in this . . .

"(As certain as I was of wanting to be a writer, I was certain of not wanting to be a teacher. I lacked the instructing turn of mind, the selflessness, the patience for teaching, and I had the unreasoning feeling that I'd be trapped. The odd thing is that when I did come to write my stories, the longest list of my characters turns out to be schoolteachers. They are to a great extent my heroines.)"

At least I gave teaching a shot for a couple of years. :)

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