I'm not ready to release this messay yet, probably because I'm super proud of it but it was rejected from a literary journal, and because I'm half prideful over the poem at the end and half cognizant that I could never write something like that and it was all the Holy Spirit. (Was that a sentence?) This messay is about the Betsy-Tacy books, which are my favorite books. They are so dear to my heart, as is this writing I did to process when I finished one of them. I feel like I'm dropping my child off at college. Or, maybe, pre-school.
So there it is. I sit crying with tears spattering the pages just the way I like them, for my personality doesn’t incline toward outward emotional vulnerability, but sometimes my romantic side forces a takeover and tears. These were the few times when I was happy to be in tears. So here I am.
The Betsy-Tacy books represent my childhood more than any others because they reflect my life more than any others. The education, religious life, home life—they all cast shadows similar in form and brightness to my own. I knew the characters perfectly, yet did not empathize too heavily with any in particular, so I left no unwanted footprints on their paths.
And I paused in the path of the books just before commencement each time, reading that last high school book, Betsy and Joe, more than once up to my designated stopping point. I stopped so close to the end of the book—with an ellipses preceding graduation—because I would not allow Betsy to finish growing up before me.
One night late this summer, I realized that my graduation had passed weeks ago, and I could finish the book. I couldn’t sleep, so I got the book off the shelf and skimmed from just before Betsy and Joe reconcile their fractured relationship over Easter break. The scene was as lovely as each time I’d read it before—the perfect excuse to talk, the picnic, the party—but this time I could look forward with anticipation to going past my stopping point. And I did.
Betsy and Joe gave their commencement speeches, walked home together, and planned to see each other the next morning before he left for his summer job. And what a morning it was.
They decided to go up on the Big Hill, for where the first book in the series opened, the eighth would close. Betsy roamed and ruled the Big Hill during her childhood, for the first four books of the series, but when she went to high school, where she met Joe Willard, she had moved out of her house on this significant hill. And now, after their last day of high school, Betsy and Joe went to the Big Hill. But Joe didn’t know what the Big Hill was; Betsy had to teach him. And each time Betsy teaches Joe something, it is significant.
She taught him that Rays never went home from a trip without presents, and they met. She taught him about Sunday night lunch, and he became part of the family. She taught him about how to picnic and told him about herself, and they began “going together in earnest” (Lovelace). And now, she teaches him about the Big Hill, her Big Hill . . . and he falls in love.
And that was when my tears rushed in. Betsy and Joe were sitting on the hill overlooking the valley and had a conversation that was entirely flawless. Flawless in so many ways—literarily, personally, agh. Their story, the conclusion of this book, was perfectly tied up with a little bow, and each element of it inside the parcel was correspondingly and fittingly perfect.
Where, however, does that leave me, apart from sobbing on my bed in front of the book?
I wasn’t sure. The only assurance I had, a "Blessed Assurance" indeed, was that my story, though not yet concluded, has an Author and Perfecter whose stories are richer and whose works are infinitely more perfect that the love-life story I so loved. In that knowledge I can—if not always rest peacefully (for my fallible mind may incline to worry)— I can trust my Author.
Write, O Lord, your words upon me;
Guide my pathway page by page.
From your pen let ink flow freely,
Truth unaltered age by age.
Let my story tells yours truly
With each turning of the plot;
May it share your glory duly
For, by you, my blood was bought.
‘Long with my blood you bought my story,
Your holy hands now hold my book.
The world’s and mine form your library,
A safe and everlasting nook.
written by Charlie/Madeline with aid of the Holy Spirit.
Lord, be glorified.
