04/20/2003

Easter is the paradigmatic happy ending to a very sad, even horrible story. Spring, especially this spring, is the delicious reward for having somehow maintained good temper through a tough winter.

Spring is never as lovely, welcome and pretty in warm weather states. In New England, one needs character to seek out the subtle beauty of winter -- the rope ice along the streams, the deciduous forest, the icy light -- and faith that the dreariness has its place, its meaning and value.

Winter is a discipline, with a stark aesthetic and sometimes hard lessons, but like a good tragedy, it prepares us to endure loss knowing that somehow, magically, meaning, truth and the weather's gifts will return.

I remember my grandmother and aunt occasionally reading me sad stories and crying as they helped me, the little kid, see what was glorious in the story's otherwise sad ending.

In middle school, an out-loud reading of the "Outcasts of Poker Flats" had to be passed from teacher to student to student before one could stay composed enough to finish it. We talked about how Aristotle's definition of tragedy -- someone from a high place fallen low -- could apply to lowlifes like these who'd been kicked out of town. We talked about the mournful winter setting. We did lots of out-loud reads in that class, but that one was memorable.

We've gotten so protective of our kids, we don't even tell them sad, winters' tales any more. They need to know that catastrophe is random and can befall any life, utterly undeservedly, however much grown-ups try to prevent it. Many of them turn to gangsta rap and Goth despair, trying to get a bead on the darkness, while, with all good intentions, we sanitize their lessons. They don't even know to be looking for the springtime of meaning in the midst of the gloom.

Misery is only pathetic until it finally begins to mean something. True tragedy illustrates important resolutions that can bring spring back to an afflicted life. So much of the pain of sadness is waiting to see what on earth goodness and meaning will emerge.

Instead, disaster occurs and the mental health counselors move in for damage control. Our culture, including our kids, may be highly medicated against depression, but you don't hear much about sadness. You can't steel yourself with the faith that spring will come if you don't admit that it's winter.

For me this last winter was a rich time for thinking about sadness, not a little because the weather, the economy, the pending war and its divisiveness within my own social community, were all quite dreary. And very much out of my control. I kept wondering how the kids were taking it. Who helps kids understand their dreary feelings -- Dad's moving out, Mom lost her job, my brother is sick -- and how to tolerate the sense of being out of control of things going terribly wrong?

I've begun to think that our culture relates to sadness and similarly tough feelings the way the Victorians related to sex. As if sex or sadness might just go away if you could stop thinking and talking about it. Recently, I read Parallel Lives, which is about five Victorian marriages, and couldn't help noticing that the cultural aversion to thinking about sex turned something potentially quite delicious, especially within a marriage, into something oppressive and toxic.

Similarly, sadness can be healing, purgative. But too often, it turns immediately to anger, leading to a floury of lawsuits, which might be necessary in some cases, but not a substitute for living through the pain of mourning for a frustratingly long time. Cultures before us worked very hard on using the arts to take us to tragic places and show us the lessons to be learned there.

When I was a graduate student in theater, I wondered at some length on what was up with the Greeks that their idea of fun was three, count them, three huge tragedies one after another, and then a mere single short comedy to round out the day. Comedy was my milieu, so I didn't get what were they after by bringing the whole town together for public weeping. The Greeks seemed perverse in their appetites, and yet impressively profound about what they chose to discuss and experience with art. They "owned" their grief, as we would say now.

Roman Catholics also used to strike me as positively morbid with their focus on death, and not just any death, but one fraught with humiliation, defeat, condemnation, even sadism. What's up with that? The streets of Mexico are rich with kind, encouraging images of the Virgin Mary, but tucked away inside the churches are the terrified, miserable images of crucified Jesus -- often dripping with copious blood and encased in a glass coffin which to my eyes looks like where Snow White should be.

Of course, especially if you're not a cushy, middle class American, terrified and miserable is exactly how life can feel. (Note the photographs of Iraqi families on the front of recent newspapers.) And sometimes life feels tragic even if you are said American. Mexicans, with their limited resources and medical care, are much closer to tragedy and so are more conscious of needing the comfort of company along some awful, Gesthemene-like journey.

Actually, kids are only too familiar with bearing up and helping others bear up, but they could use some reassurance that health, strength, understanding, compassion and priority-resetting comes after living through sadness. Life goes on, changed, yes, but people on the other side of tragedy will tell often tell you that it was somehow the chastening agent, the healing or jolt that straightened out or enriched their lives.

Sadness is normal. And inevitable.

And it makes us that much more grateful for spring.

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.