The Poetic Invitation
By Caitlin Cudd
My ten-year-old daughter, Josie, has been obsessed with the Anne of Green Gables books by L.M. Montgomery for two years. She dressed as Anne for Halloween, carries her pencils in an “I’d Rather Be in Avonlea” case, and has read the entire series three times. She tried to persuade me to read the books many times. She copied the scene where Anne tries to cry for Matthew, “who had walked with her last evening at sunset, and was now lying in the dim room below with that awful peace on his brow,” into her journal and brought it to me to read. Despite Anne’s love for Matthew, she can feel only a “dull ache of misery” until she finally wakes in the night to the memory of his voice saying, “My girl—my girl that I am proud of.” Only then is she able to weep. I read this part of the story in my daughter’s messy print and looked into her expectant eyes. “You’ll read it now, won’t you?” she asked. I am embarrassed to say, my reply was, “That is so beautiful, honey. But I tried that book with your older sister. We couldn’t make it through. Anne talks too much.”
It was not a love for my daughter but an obligation that made me read the book. Anne of Green Gables was the February Well-Read Mom pick. In January, the darkest and coldest month in Minnesota, we had slogged through Flannery O’Connor’s brilliant but dark The Violent Bear it Away. Compared to the brutality of Tarwater, how bad could Anne’s chattiness really be? Besides, book club is the highlight of my month, a time to come together with some of my favorite ladies and have fulfilling conversations about good literature, one of my favorite topics. In the three years I have been a member, I have read every assigned book except one, despite being a homeschool mom with eight kids and many obligations. I grabbed Josie’s worn, underlined, hearted-in-the-margin copy and finally resolved to read the book. It took me slightly longer than Matthew, but not nearly as long as Marilla, to fall hopelessly in love with Anne. I finished the book in two days, sobbing at the end. Josie hugged me and said, “I cried at the end too, Mama.” We cried for different reasons. She cried because Matthew died and because a book she cherished was over. I cried because this book, more than any other, made clear to me what we have lost. Anne’s “scope of imagination,” her hope, her delight in nature, and her endless pursuit of being better seem almost gone from childhood. More than any book about parenting or childhood educational philosophy, this book reminded me why I homeschool my children and fight for a childhood filled with the most beautiful and authentic literature I can find. I put Anne back on the shelf, feeling grateful for having read it, and started reading our March book club selection, with no idea that Anne’s most significant gift was yet to come.
The week after I finished Anne, I grabbed a poetry anthology and opened it to a random page to honor my New Year’s resolution of “a poem a day in 2022.” I landed on “Pippa’s Song” by Robert Browning. As I read aloud, “God’s in His Heaven; all’s right with the world,” Josie and I locked eyes and said in unison, “the end of Anne!” She ran to the shelf by her bed where she kept her special books, grabbed Anne, and read that beautiful last paragraph to me. Anne looks out her window, “companioned by a glad content,” realizing that although she can’t go away to college as she had dreamed, and duty must replace some of the freedoms of childhood, “nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy and her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!” She whispers softly, “God’s in His Heaven; all’s right with the world.” We exhaled and delighted in knowing that Anne, too, had read Pippa’s Song. She had memorized it and kept it in her heart until she needed it to remind herself that even when things don’t happen the way we want them to, “God’s in His Heaven; all’s right with the world.”
Josie and I were instant Browning fans. Any friend of Anne’s is a friend of ours. We memorized Pippa’s song, read more of his poetry, and swooned over his love of Elizabeth Barrett. Josie told me, “The next time I read the ending of Anne, it will be even better because I will think of everything about Robert Browning that Anne knew.” We needed no planned lecture about allusion, the cannon, or the “Great Conversation.” Josie had been invited to the Great Conversation by an old friend, and she found it a delightful place to be. I have tremendous confidence that she will never leave this great conversation, that it will enrich her life, and that she will never forget that it was Anne who first invited her. I am forever grateful to be able to participate in this conversation with my daughter, and I plan to take her book recommendations more seriously in the future.
About Well-Read Mom
For our Tenth Anniversary, the reading list put together by Well-Read Mom reflects on the theme of family. In Well-Read Mom we desire to create a place for women, not to escape from family life and work, but to experience a kind of leisure through friendship and literature so that women can return to their lives with a renewed vision and vigor. By reading books together, we help sustain a tradition of reading, which is a gift not only to our families but to the world. We hope you’ll join Well-Read Mom for our Year of the Family. Find out more.
