Too Close to Home

Entry #26
Work: Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find

I want to judge the grandmother harshly. Part of me resents her for only having one child, for being a burden, for manipulating and exercising control over an adult child’s life. And that’s a personal response, springing from a personal situation.

I’m not an only child, but I’m the youngest child and the only female biological child. That makes me Bailey, and I fight against it, even to the point of assigning the grandmother’s role to my own mother—though I don’t want anything to happen to her. I only hear her talking me into making time to do things for her that she doesn’t really need and spending time that I really don’t have to spend, feeling the resentment of taking care of another’s whims at the expense of neglecting my (and my families) own needs. Perhaps there’s more of The Misfit in me than I’d ever be willing to admit. Not the killer instinct, but on occasion, when I forget the blessings, the idea that “It’s no real pleasure in life.”

It’s just the mood I’m in. I love my mother, want to do whatever I can for her when I can, but I do resent those side trips down dirt roads leading to certain hassles that aren’t as bad as having my family and myself dragged off into the woods to be shot.

There’s a lot more to be said about this story, and as I missed the day’s class, I suppose there’s lots that others have had to say about it that won’t even occur to me.

Is The Misfit a kind of Jesus who, rather than giving his own life for the salvation of others, takes theirs instead? It could fit. Very easily.
It’s time to go to bed. I’ll chew on it some more later. Flannery O’Connor has just made my summer reading list.

Till later…