Great re -read! Thanks David! Check out Jay Parini’s excellent Robert Frost: A Life, p. 172 for an observation on Mary’s portrayal as evidence of Frost’s empathy for “women’s ways of knowing.”
It makes you think about what "deserve" means, and what place it should have. Sometimes the kindness we don't think we deserve is what ends up making all the difference. Maybe home is where they have to love you anyway.
I get it when Warren says, "I'm done." A nurse I work with says, "Givers have to draw boundaries because takers never will." The thirst for oblivion, the ticking clock of withdrawal - these are things that will take everything anyone throws into it, burn through it, and angrily demand more. But even when you draw a line at more money or another night on the couch, you don't have to cut off love. "'In winter he comes back to us.'" Of course - and in that winter may be the time that your love, however undeserved, might lend someone some grace to move on, like Silas, or maybe kindle a small flame of life, or pride, or self that could catch.
"Death of the Hired Man" is a great poem. My mother, who would be 104 were she still alive, introduced me to it many years ago. I carried the story in my head all my life. But it was only after I had been working with people like Silas for many years that I actually reread it. The line about home has always been close to my consciousness, but the line that jumped off the page when I reread the poem maybe a decade ago was this: "And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope . . ." That nails it. If we don't focus on that, we get nowhere with the people we are trying to help change their lives.
Great re -read! Thanks David! Check out Jay Parini’s excellent Robert Frost: A Life, p. 172 for an observation on Mary’s portrayal as evidence of Frost’s empathy for “women’s ways of knowing.”
It makes you think about what "deserve" means, and what place it should have. Sometimes the kindness we don't think we deserve is what ends up making all the difference. Maybe home is where they have to love you anyway.
I get it when Warren says, "I'm done." A nurse I work with says, "Givers have to draw boundaries because takers never will." The thirst for oblivion, the ticking clock of withdrawal - these are things that will take everything anyone throws into it, burn through it, and angrily demand more. But even when you draw a line at more money or another night on the couch, you don't have to cut off love. "'In winter he comes back to us.'" Of course - and in that winter may be the time that your love, however undeserved, might lend someone some grace to move on, like Silas, or maybe kindle a small flame of life, or pride, or self that could catch.
This was a particularly moving post. Thank you
"Death of the Hired Man" is a great poem. My mother, who would be 104 were she still alive, introduced me to it many years ago. I carried the story in my head all my life. But it was only after I had been working with people like Silas for many years that I actually reread it. The line about home has always been close to my consciousness, but the line that jumped off the page when I reread the poem maybe a decade ago was this: "And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope . . ." That nails it. If we don't focus on that, we get nowhere with the people we are trying to help change their lives.
How to give someone something to look forward to in these circumstances. The big question. Herein lies the only hope.