Dear Lucy

If I’m honest with myself, I’m never not in an Anne of Green Gables kind of mood. Anne Shirley seems to be the ever-present angel on my shoulder, whispering, “Life is beautiful. Life is extraordinary. Life is meant to be lived to the fullest. Keep trying.”

Today, I’m feeling particularly Anne-ish for a multitude of reasons, not excluding the sheer number of hours that I have spent reading her quotes this week. She has been a marvelous asset to my portfolio project… but more about that on Thursday.

When it comes down to it, how can one feel anything but Anne-ish after bingeing the TV mini series with the lovely Megan Follows? I actually had to drown my feelings explosion in Sword Art Online (which didn’t work, of course, and more on that later, too) when I was done. I kept having these flashbacks… to the time my best friend and I stayed up all night because I had to know if Anne was ever going to accept Gilbert’s proposal, to the time I started reading Anne of Green Gables, to the time I finished reading Rilla of Ingleside.

Rilla of Ingleside, my all-time favorite book and the last of The Anne of Green Gables Novels, was different–much different–than Anne’s other adventures, predominantly because in this one, she is a supporting character. Her daughter, Bertha Marilla “Rilla”, takes over as the main point of view.

Based on Anne’s curiosity, kindness and perceptive nature, one doesn’t naturally expect her youngest daughter to be haughty, prideful and selfish. But that’s exactly what she is at the beginning of her story. I can say that because she knows how much I love her.

Rilla’s character development is too slow, too fast and thereby perfectly timed. By the end of her story, she is a relentlessly kind, brave and generous soul. And if not for World War I, it may never have been at all.

Rilla of Ingleside retains Lucy Maud Montgomery’s knowing voice, but it lacks the comfort that readers grow to expect from her. Around this time last year, I was contemplating that very thing, staring, teary-eyed, out the window of my grandfather’s house at the autumn colors. The pain of WWI, of Rilla, of Anne had settled deeply into my heart.

So I wrote a letter– a letter that I couldn’t send but had to write anyway. And today, I want to share that letter with you.

Dear Lucy (M. Montgomery),

I have some things I’d like to say to you. But I can’t. So, I’m going to write them down.

WWI changed forever the world as you knew it. It changed those around you. It changed you. And thereby, your story and the stories of those you created were impacted in ways that I did not foresee. That YOU did not foresee, I imagine. Sometimes, we don’t anticipate that which happens anyway. Sometimes, we can’t.

You changed and your writing style with you. I never imagined that your lovely, comforting, lyrical voice could become at once so cold, defiant and deadly. I would not have thought you capable of describing such horrors. I was wrong.

Tonight, I mourn the loss of a beloved character of yours, a character who, like so many before him, have come to live in my heart. And like Rilla, I will be patient and keep faith.

It takes very little to create a character. It takes a whole heart to make him believable. I relearn that every day. You were given a gift, Montgomery, to make words on paper live and breathe. I would thank you, but I think you must have cried while writing this chapter, just as I cried reading it, only harder. To thank you would be to insult you, and I couldn’t do that.

I am so sorry, Lucy, for YOUR loss. It must have been very difficult, no matter how many times you outlined it in your head. But I know he’d want us to remember that tomorrow is a new day. That is always true of tomorrows. And that is a beautiful thing.

So, that’s what I’ll do. Life gets confusing, and terrifying and just plain hard, but I’ll remember tomorrow and smile. And for that, I do thank you, and I thank the God who creates them. He is good.

Always,

Aquinnah