American Under-18 Population Drops

For the first time in at least two decades, the Wall Street Journal reported January 6, the American population under the age of 18 years of age fell between 2010 and 2011. First off, fewer immigrant children are coming to the United States. Second, fewer children are being born. The Journal correlates the decreased birth rate with the states hardest hit by unemployment--which seems true but not uniformly.
The numbers of children in the United States also fell in the 1970s, when the country underwent both economic recession and cultural upheaval--women entered the workforce en masse and the divorce rate climbing steeply. A large drop in fertility was also the cause of a decline in the number of children in the 1920s--a boom period that was also marked by a major shift in cultural norms with the emergence of the flapper.
Overall, the number of children in the United States is still 2.3% above that of 2000, but that growth occurred in the early part of the decade.

The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind

David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars and The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind

About every two years or so, I return to the film Snow Falling on Cedars and imbibe the beauty of this tale by David Guterson and of the movie it was made into. This January I found myself doing the same, the film suiting a post-Christmas more inward-looking mood perhaps. I put the film on when I was doing other things, even out of the room the tv is in; since I know it so well I know which pictures to conjure in my mind to match with the dialogue or music I hear. This time I was struck with what a decent person Ishmael, the young man who is the central character, turns out to be--how he goes out of his way to help his old friend, even though his heart is breaking, even though it means he will lose his dream of her forever. The way in which Ishmael changes in the story, coming to grips with his past at home and at war, is exactly what I am looking for in a story--a character that manages to scrabble his way to a better self.

I wondered if David Guterson has other such characters. I made a beeline to the library and took out his collection of short stories titled The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind.

The answer is Yes. With the exception of the first story, the collection strikes the same kind of gently quiet but always-moving tone of Snow Falling on Cedars. Guterson's poetic description is generously present--description that arrests you with the unique perceptions of his eye and choices and juxtapositions of his words. Never gratuitous, invasive, or interrupting, this quality of his writing makes the "country" a participating force of the story--matching, highlighting, or countering the mood of the moment.

The subjects are the different, and changing, cultures of family life in America, the passage of generations, growing up and not growing up, friendship, the apprehension of beauty, and the glorious otherness of nature.

My favorite stories were "American Elm" and "The Day of the Moonwalk." In "American Elm" we meet the kind of quiet kind young man that recalls the hero of Snow Falling on Cedars. "The Day of the Moonwalk," for me, was a near perfect construction for a short story, conveying so much in so few words that I was awe-struck.

Then I came across this passage in the last story, "The Flower Garden," that gave me pause:

He was a large, difficult and serious man who spoke to me often of the vagaries of baseball, wiping his face all around with a handkerchief and exuding a domestic, comfortable confidence. I often think of him now as one of a dying breed of men, who want, really, nothing for themselves, who have effaced their innermost desires without self-flagellation, and--in order to avoid the desperations of solitude--have given themselves over completely to their wives and to their children, and ultimately to their children's children, and done it with magnificent serenity.

I am looking forward to reading more of Mr. Guterson's works.

Alice McDermott's Wakes and Funerals

Alice McDermott: Trying to write while her children are at school.

"To get it right," says Alice McDermott in a beautiful article on her life as an author of fiction, "is to find the language that conveys what is beyond the reach of words, the language that allows us, reader and writer both, to glimpse whatever it is that makes us love life terribly, as Fitzgerald put it. Even for a minute."

I think McDermott has achieved this aim in Wakes and Funerals. Mostly seen from the eyes of three children, the novel centers on a family--mother, father, and three children, who live out in the Long Island suburbs during the 1950s. Twice a week each summer, the mother, Lucy, drags the children to visit her stepmother, called simply Momma, and Lucy's three sisters who live in a small, airless apartment in Brooklyn. The trip takes multiple bus changes, and they reamin there through dinner, after which the father comes to pick up his family and drive them back to Long Island.

One is amazed at the incredible patience of the children. Lucy comes back to her stepmother's household mostly to complain about her unhappiness with her marriage, lamenting that her husband "is not the same" since he returned from the war. "This is not the man I married," she says, although by the end of the book she appears to have reconciled herself to loving him.


Girl in Brooklyn in the 1950s.

One wonders if her husband is really Lucy's problem. In accounts of their yearly vacations and whenever he is present, the father seems to be a loving man who tries to do the best for his family and throw some fun into the bargain. Fun is at a premium at the house in Brooklyn, where Momma reigns over three not-young daughters, two of whom have not found the gumption to build families of their own. One had happily become a nun, but left the convent because her joie de vivre far outstripped her attachment to God. This sister makes efforts to alleviate the boredom of her two nieces and nephew and eventually falls in love and marries, but Momma's house in Brooklyn in under a shroud woven by grief over the death in childbirth of the mother of Lucy and her sisters, the widower's subsequent marriage to his wife's sister--Momma, and the father's sudden death shortly thereafter.

Yet, this does not seem to be the true subject of McDermott's book. We are not treated to in-depth exposures of character. Rather, it is as if McDermott is writing about the cultural air. Her major focus is the ambiance, the details of everyday living, the descriptions of the streets both in Long Island and Brooklyn, the apartment, the cars, the people, the pets--the life--the world that these characters go about their lives in. Catholicism is also a unvarying presence--the home over home. Reading the many detailed descriptions in the book as the characters move through their story, one feels as if one were being carried down a stream created by the ambiance she describes. While all characters are treated sympathetically, they are part of the stream, too. It is the total world they live in--the very air they breathe--that McDermott most beautifully and lovingly evokes.

Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming

For a beautiful Christmas post, see Lanier's Books.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

"We must pray literally without ceasing—without ceasing—in every occurrence and employment of our lives . . . that prayer of the heart which is independent of place or situation, or which is rather a habit of lifting up the heart to God as in a constant communication with Him."--Elizabeth Ann Seton

Today is the feast day for Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821), the first person born in the United States to be canonized by the Catholic Church (1975). She is the patron saint of Catholic schools.

Born in New York to a prominent Episcopalian family, Elizabeth Ann Seton was left motherless at the age of three. Even as a child, she was dedicated to Christianity, wearing a small crucifix around her neck and taking delight in reading the Psalms. Psalm 23 remained her favorite prayer throughout her life. When she was 19 years old, Elizabeth married a New York businessman, to whom she was devoted. The couple had five children. Despite her many household duties, she found time to organize prominent women in New York City to visit the sick poor in their homes and bring them and their families sustenance. Inspired by the work of Saint Vincent de Paul, the group was called informally the "Ladies of Charity."

In December 1803, Elizabeth Ann Seton was widowed and lived for a period of time in Rome with the Italian family of her husband's business partner. Here she was introduced to the Catholic faith, and in March 1805 was received into the church, amid the protests of her family and friends. Faced with the necessity to support her children, Mrs. Seton sought teaching positions. In 1809, after several difficult years, she accepted the invitation of the Sulpicians Order to teach in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Here she founded the Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School for the education of Catholic girls, the first such school in the United States. She also established a religious community in Emmitsburg dedicated to the care of the children of the poor. She died at the age of 46 of tuberulosis, having already buried two of her daughters.

You can get a glimpse of the soul of this saint in the book Elizabeth Seton: Selected Writings edited by Ellin Kelly and Annabelle Melville. Here is a benediction that she wrote toward the end of her life:

Mary Queen and Virgin pure!--as poor unfledged Birds uncovered in our cold and hard nests on this Earth we cry to her for her sheltering outspread wings--little hearts not yet knowing sorrow--but poor tired and older ones pressed with pains and cares seek peace and rest--O our Mother! and find it in thee.--

Saint Genevieve of Paris

Saint Genevieve by Hugo van der Goes, 1479

Women saints are exemplars of faith whose charitable work often resulted in the creation of new institutions and new precedents that changed the course of history. Saint Genevieve (420-502), the Patron Saint of Paris, was one of these saints, and January 3 is her feast day.

This faith-fueled woman is a saint for our time, especially because she appears to have been mentored by Saint Germanus (378-448), Bishop of Auxerre, who led the Church's fight against the Pelagian heresy in Britain at the behest of Pope Saint Celestine I. Pelagius (354-420) believed that man can be sinless and good all on his own and has no need of God's grace. The story goes that on his way to Britain in 429, Germanus stopped in Nanterre, France, where Genevieve, a young girl born of well-to-do parents, confided to him that she wanted to live only for God. Germanus encouraged her and sent her the veil of a dedicated virgin. When Genevieve's parents died when she was 15, she went to live with her godmother in Paris, where she devoted her days to prayer and charity and was reportedly visited again by Germanus.

Her life of devout piety though is not why Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris. In a foreshadowing of the peasant military heroine, Saint Joan, Saint Genevieve is credited with averting the destruction of Paris--twice. The first time was in 451, when the ferocious Attila the Hun was on a course straight for Paris. Genevieve told the terrified Parisians not to flee the city but to remain in their homes, fast, and pray, and she organized a prayer marathon. Abruptly Attila changed course, leaving Paris intact. The second time was when invading Franks had blockaded the city in 464. Genevieve ran the blockade to bring food to the starving Parisians. Later she pleaded successfully for Parisian prisoners of war to the Frankish King Childeric, and King Clovis liberated captives at her urging.

Hugo van der Goes painted Saint Genevieve on the outer panel for a diptych that depicted the Fall of Man on one side and the Redemption (the Lamentation of Christ) on the other, indicating the high esteem either he or his patrons (or both) had for Saint Genevieve 1,000 years later. She is also considered a patron saint of young girls.

Happy New Year, Everyone!