"How to Win", "Verona: A Young Woman Speaks", and "Roses, Rhododendron"

The "magical" 70's, being a young child and young teen through the seventies I watched much of this era unfold. I owned bell bottoms, hip huggers and clogs, and have since watched them come back to popularity again. As well as the Lava lamp and mood rings. I sat with my father and watched the very first Star Wars movie, and I must say the new Star War movies pale in comparison. I have witnessed the video game revolution from the first Atari video gaming system to the Wii, and I have to admit I have not improved my gaming skills in the last forty years. But with all things being equal I have also witnessed the worse of the seventies as well. I saw the disgraceful way Americans treated Vietnam veterans when they came back from war, most of whom did not choose to go to Vietnam. The importance of Martin Luther King's message will not be taught in schools during this decade, as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars.

The three stories that we read this time show the dynamics of a family. In particular the relationships between mother and child, with the father not being quite connected. In the first story, "Verona: A Young Woman Speaks" the father while present is the "Disney Dad" he showers his daughter with gifts and wants to show her museum and paintings, but with her mother she shares a "simple" moment that was true happiness. In the second story, "How to Win", the father is living outside reality while the mother is trying to cope with their son's autism. While he is living in denial, the mother is riddled with guilt because she feels they must have done something to deserve their son's autism. In the third story "Roses, Rhododendron", the father has ran off with his girlfriend leaving his wife and daughter behind. The mother in this story picks up and moves south to start an antique store on the whim of the Ouija board. The young girl develops a friendship with a young girl and her family that her mother becomes jealous of, and deals with that jealousy by talking badly about them.


"Verona: A Young Woman Speaks" by Harold Brodskey, a young girl and her parents are traveling to Salzburg for Christmas via the train stopping along the way. One gets the impression the story takes place right before WWII or shortly after, "the people had stern, sad faces, beautiful, unlaughing faces". The narrator tells the story in first person, through the eyes of the young girl. At this time in her life she felt loved, by her parents and by the strangers she encountered on her voyage, " I understood I was special. I understood it then." Her father indulged her with monetary items, he had saved for this special trip and splurged on her. He wanted to show her paintings and castles, but with her mother she shares a moment in the middle of the night on the train watching the mountains and the moon. Her father awakes, only to comment the scenery was "pretty" not really feeling the magnitude of what they were seeing and feeling. The story touches on the relationships between her and her parents, one on one, and how her parents relate to each other. While the love between adults have conditions, the love between a child and parent is unconditional. Her mother at times was jealous of the love the father showed the daughter, I could not help wondering if it was the love that the father gave the girl or the love that the girl gave her father that was the reason for the jealousy. "I fell asleep in her arms. That was happiness then".

"How to Win" by Rosellen Brown, is a sad story about the pain a mother feels watching her son deal with autism. The time was the 1970's when children with autism were forced into public schools with no real plan to deal with their special needs. The Individual Education Plan (IEP) was little more than a plan how to control these children, not educate and prepare them for the world. This story is told as a first person through the eyes of the mother as she is trying to cope with the every day traumas of living with a child that has autism. The father does not see what mom sees every day, he doesn't want to. It is easier to pretend that he is just an overactive boy than to deal with the reality of autism, this is evident when he wants to take his son on a trip to the Smithsonian. His son can't make it through the day without destroying everything in his path, his father was in complete denial. The incident in class on a day where she has given him "a favor" of not taking his medication, shows the true pain of this mother. The realization in order for her to win with her son she needs to break him. Which is what happens in the classroom that day, the other kids and the teacher pin him down breaking his momentum and his spirit. In order for one of them to win the other must lose.

"Roses, Rhododendron" by Alice Adams is the story of a young girl and her mother. When her father runs away with his girlfriend, her mother based on the advice of her ouija board moves the two of them to the south in order to set up an antique store. This story is done in first person with the young girl as the narrator of the story. The young girl meets another young girl, Harriett and her parents, Emily and Lawerence, she idolizes this family because they have the stablity in their home that she doesn't have in her own. The two girls become fast friends, and they spend much of their time at Harriett's house with her mother Emily. This friendship bothers Margot, the narrator's mother, she has become jealous of the relationship that our narrator has with Emily. Margot handles this jealousy by talking badly about the Farr family, in particular Emily making her to look like a weak woman. Later in the narrator's life she will have some of those same feelings regarding her daughter and one of her friend's mothers. After they move to be with her father in San Francisco, she loses touch with Harriett. She reaches out to Harriett later in life, when Harriett writes back she tells our narrator how her family felt she was as important to them as they were to her. Interestingly, while she thought her and Harriett were different, her husband comments how Harriett sounded like her.