I find it interesting how I’m drawn more to nonfiction these days than I am to novels. I think it’s because I long to feel grounded, and facts are more grounding than fairytales. My whimsy is bound to return to me as my foundation grows more solid and my new roots take hold, but right now, when it comes to stories, I can hardly stand to skim the text if it isn’t from my dear Maud.
This is how I wound up meeting Pat Gardiner last month.
Pat and I did not click quite so quickly as I had hoped. She is one of Maud’s youngest protagonists, and I was worried I had already outgrown her.
Seriously, how am I still doing this? Maud never, ever lets me down.
Hold On, Baby
Watching Pat grow up over the course of Silver Bush is an odd thing. She ages 11 years in body and many more in soul. But in her heart of hearts, she clings to what she knows—her family, her friends, and most of all, her home.
I feel for this girl.
I was this girl.
Maybe I still am.
When I was in high school, one of my friends broke down during our Tuesday morning ballet class because her older sister had just moved out. I remember giving her a group hug and feeling lucky that I would never experience what she was feeling at that moment. I’m the oldest of three, and I had no plans of moving away from my brothers. Someday, of course, but that was for Grown-Up Aquinnah to deal with—not me. What a relief!
It wasn’t until recently that I realized Grown-Up Aquinnah and I are now one. I don’t know when it happened or how I missed it—if I missed it?—but here I am, and here she is, and at least one of my siblings is about to live on the other side of the country.
Looking on as Pat clings to Sid, her youngest brother, feels no different than being in my own body these days. Uncomfortable and unsure and resigned. She knows Sid will want to marry a PEI girl and take over the family farm, just as I know my brothers’ life and career choices can’t warp to accommodate mine. And they shouldn’t. We’re different people. But knowing that doesn’t make it less hard.
Similarly, Pat’s fear of change cannot save the life of her friend, Bets, who dies partway through Silver Bush. It can’t stop her best friend, Jingle, from leaving PEI to become an architect.
No amount of missing her already will keep my best friend from moving to Boston after her wedding in June. I know this, and still, I feel the weight of a dramatic life change. She and I have been friends for over a decade. I met her just after leaving Massachusetts myself. The irony is not lost on me.
What a waste of energy, trying to halt the winds of change. But I think it’s reflexive. Our egos have nothing better to do.
Does This Feel Right To You
Of all the things Pat tries to control, her place at Silver Bush is of utmost importance. That’s why she can’t bear to see Sid married. If he brings a wife into the picture, Pat will have to leave, and the only dream she’s ever had is of keeping house. But not just any house—her home.
If you’re new here, welcome. We talk about home a lot.
It was concluded last month in one of these ramblings that home is ultimately found within. It took me a minute, but I firmly believe this to be true. Wherever you go, there you are, and if that’s not acceptable, nothing else will be either.
But a home! A physical, tangible, four-walls-and-a-toasty-warm-bed home. All my life, I have longed for the unwavering stability of knowing that “where I hang my hat” is where I will stay for a good long while.
I have moved once a year, on average, since I was a child. Not once have I struggled to make myself comfortable in a house. It’s been speculated that I was an interior designer in another life. But in this one, I’m just a woman who puts down roots wherever she can. It’s a trait that makes it difficult to leave a place but easy to adjust to a new one.
Pat, on the other hand, has lived at Silver Bush forever. She knows nothing but the charming old kitchen and the Poet’s room and Judy’s hooked rugs. Not only does she not want to leave—she can’t even imagine it.
I think Pat gets a bad rap because she isn’t clever like Anne or fierce like Emily… or particularly endowed with any unique characteristics whatsoever. She’s simply obsessed with Silver Bush to the point of being in a constant state of anxiety over the slightest hint of change.
The familiarity of this feeling, despite my moving history, is a little gross.
But I don’t think Pat deserves the hate she receives. Hers, I think, is a cautionary tale, one that applies to all of us. “Here is what happens when you refuse to let go of what is no longer serving you.” Didn’t Maud herself say that she resonated more with Pat than with any of her other heroines?
Pat knows Silver Bush is not the same without Bets, Jingle, and the veil of childhood. She knows—a bit like Jo March—that she’s lonely. All she has to do is admit it to herself and be set free.
Easier said than done, yes?
Dream A New Dream With Me
The best part about this two-book series—with the possible exception of Judy—is Hilary “Jingle” Gordon.
He lacks Gilbert’s confidence and Teddy’s flair, but he more than makes up for both with his kindness and patience.
My favorite thing about Jingle is how determined he is to build Pat a house that she loves even more than Silver Bush. When she explains why he’ll never succeed, he just smiles and goes on imagining their life together. Even as a child, Jingle understands the power of keeping faith (a running theme with Maud).
And what a parallel to the love of the Universe! The kind of love that stops at nothing to reach us exactly where we are. “You can have it all,” it squeals, and we stubbornly reply, “Maybe, but all I want is this,” hard-pressed to realize when we’ve outgrown our four walls.
Even when her sister, Rae, moves to China and her dear companion, Judy, passes away, Pat maintains that Silver Bush is all she needs to be happy. She breaks off her years-long engagement to a man she does not love and hunkers down for a life of sweet solitude. Loneliness, when framed as a gift, isn’t so bad… right? Maybe loneliness is freedom. Nothing can change if there is no one around to force it.
But that’s not really true—is it?
In any case, it’s not true for Pat, who finds in her loneliness that there are always variables outside of one’s control. Her grouchy sister-in-law accidentally burns Silver Bush to the ground, sparing nothing but the front door and a few trinkets. Despite her best efforts, “symbolically speaking,” Pat winds up back on the Base Line road, where she once got lost as a child. That fateful night, she did not walk herself home to Silver Bush.
Hilary did.
And in the same way, when her carefully laid plans crumble around her, Hilary is there, loving her, as he has always loved her. He has held her tenderly, yet loosely, in his heart, never once asking her to leave her home. His love for her inspires his career path, his travels, his studies. He knows nothing may ever come of it, but loving her is, in his words, “the best thing.”
So the one truth that has never changed for Hilary becomes the one factor that changes everything for Pat. He has built her a house wherein lies each precious gift ever given to him by her family. And for the first time ever, she tastes true freedom and is glad.
Love over fear.
Love over fear.
With Maud, the message is always love over fear.
Love for yourself, for others, for the smallest moments in your life.
Maybe this, too, is where home is ultimately located: in every time and place where love is welcome. Not the kind that harbors and clings and worries and smothers, but the kind that opens, trusts, and keeps faith.
P.S. I never dog-ear pages. I dog-eared these.
“Don’t feel badly, Pat, dear, because I love you and you can’t love me. I’ve always loved you. I can’t help it and I wouldn’t if I could. If the choice had been mine I would still have chosen to love you. There are people who try to forget a hopeless love. I’m not one of them, Pat. To me the greatest misfortune life could bring would be that I should forget you. I want to remember and love you always. That will be unspeakably better than any happiness that could come through forgetting. My love for you is the best thing… always has been the best thing… in my life. It hasn’t made me poorer. On the contrary it has enriched my whole existence and given me the gift of clear vision for the things that matter; it has been a lamp held before my feet whereby I have avoided many pitfalls of baser passions and unworthy dreams. It will always be so.”
“Then we’ll go home… home. Listen to me rolling the word under my tongue. I’ve never had a home, you know. Oh, how tired I am of living in other people’s houses!”
Photo by Elijah M. Henderson on Unsplash
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