People of Olden. When a Small Choice Leads to the Deeper Story
I just cannot make myself read Theo of Golden. There, I’ve said it.
Many of us have heard about this book and read it or know someone who recommends it. A bona fide bestseller, the story of Theo is centered around a character in his older years, whose memorable goodness has inspired the reading nation. This book has it all: Tone, setting, unique plot, unfolding beauty.
So, why have I decided NOT to read it even though a very bow-wrapped Theo sits on my coffee table?
There’s always a why behind my what. With this contrary attitude, I recognize the need to step deeper into my seemingly insignificant decision. Keeping watch over my thoughts has kept me sober for twenty-five years. I can’t stay contrary too long. It whittles at my soul.
But over a book, you might ask? I thought the same thing. After journaling and taking stock of my emotional inventory, however, I realized my many-layered problem. And it had nothing at all to do with a character named Theo, and everything to do with the character called ‘me.’ Go figure.
Firstly, I, an older person, have some resentments from People of Olden. My people.
My grandfather was 86 when he died. He was everything Theo isn’t. His secrets came to light, and they were anything but golden. He grew up not knowing his father, down to his very name, and according to my mother, was showered materially to make up for the lack. “Spoiled rotten,” we call it the South. Like most of us with unresolved trauma, my grandfather bled his hurts onto his children and my grandmother.
His erratic nature decimated his family’s basic need of security. A mind given over to fifty shades of darkness, my grandfather stole the peace my mom and her family needed. So much so, that she stood before her father’s casket, finally telling him out loud the hurt and pain he’d caused.
To this day, I wonder why she didn’t broach these matters to his face. It might have relieved her angst, surely. It might have stirred the pot with her mother, my grandmother. He might have laughed to her face. Whatever the case, we’ve all been in those situations when the time has passed to speak matters of the heart. Hurt and loneliness and other emotions often encapsulate us to protect our interior wounds. Festering, a common word used both medically and emotionally, occurs. Perhaps having the final say was my mother’s only recourse, if not the best, for a dead man who could no longer do harm.
My father was far and away different from my grandfather. He worked hard. He loved my mother, according to the old letters my sister and I found. He provided for his family and employees. He and Mom were a team uniting to grow a business, and successful it was.
But the one concern my mom had during her marriage, all her life up until death, was security. Would she be provided for? This simple question was left unanswered by my father quite purposefully. He liked keeping matters close at hand, most for only his lawyer to know. Thus, my mom was devastated by his death, but also left wondering how she, who’d traveled the world with my father and had a bank account, was going to pay for the electric bill.
Thus, I limped into all my male relationships, each one an attempt to secure security. My brand was ‘emotional security.’ Can I really trust you? Will you really be there? Oddly, I sabotaged a lot and flipped the tables before someone else could. The echo in my ears and the fight to this day is, “You’re not enough.” And in a prophetic way of sorts, this could be said to be self-evident as a woman divorced.
What does this have to do with Theo of Golden? Perhaps everything. Without having read the book, I have heard about the character who operates under kindness, compassion, and goodness in such creative ways.
Hearing of an ideal standard when compared to the reality of life can inspire, most definitely. It can also have some of us chasing to write down our spiritual inventories and calling our accountability partners to voice our emotional reactions. We recognize the importance of this, all to avoid the hurt, habit or hangup that threatens our peace, and might find us bellying up to the bar, or darkening the doors to that website we shouldn’t.
Is a book to blame? Oh, heavens, never. I write books on serious topics to open the door to questions that ‘might should’ be asked, hopefully, helping others. I read books with serious topics to help me make sense of the world. So, for me, and perhaps you, a reaction to a book stands as a mirror reflecting who we want to be, or what we might want to consider. Books help us plod through rocky timestamps of our personal histories. Yet, in the end, I must face my story. The hard cold truth is I cannot use the past as an excuse for my present thoughts and actions.
Ultimately, I recognize that the ‘Olden’ I’m having the conflict with is not an elderly book character making a difference in the world. No, it’s the 64-year old woman who struggles with being on the downside of life.
It’s the creaky knees, the crepey skin, the achy neck, but more so the groaning and envious heart I must examine. It’s the sad heart that screams the world has passed me by, the desperate grasping at molecules to remain ‘relevant.’ It’s the negative words that remind me I’ve missed the train, and I’m too OLDEN to board. That riding the ‘perfect’ train, which most of us try to catch, is for the mysterious ‘them,’ those who seem favored. Just not me. Just not us.
It's the shortened list of the people who have known me the longest. I’m down to my siblings now, and my ex-husband, the very qualifier complicating life. It’s the reminder where I lacked boundaries, he lacked borders. I worry over this legacy left for my children. I fear a loved one ends up speaking unrequited words over my urn of ashes.
Decades of “I could haves, should haves, if only I would haves” add up. I’m working, writing, speaking, and most definitely praying through them. It is a process, with no Insta-help here, except awareness and time, and the most blessed, freeing words in the human language: forgiveness.
In the end, I must recognize the truth of the matter. I can blame people from my OLDEN. I can be prompted by people who live or write GOLDEN, but ultimately, I must look at the inside of my heart and determine whether I want it to be STOLEN by lies of my own making. Or I can choose life, and live, giving the itchy scratchy to God, by seeking His thoughts and ways on these matters.
The golden of goodness emboldens us to take another way. Books, conversations and prayer can serve as a redeeming fork-in-the-road, reminding us to take a better way, that of grace and gratitude.
And with that, Theo and I can now become friends.
-RLK
Written by Renee Leonard Kennedy — imperfectly human, deeply honest.
