September 3, 1993
Dear Everyone:
“Jeannie” and I went to see
The Secret
Garden (the movie, not the musical) last week.
I first encountered
The Secret
Garden in about the 4th grade at Our Lady of the
Lake
Elementary School, where Sister Mary Fill-in-the-Blank read it to us one
hour’s worth at a time, provided we behaved ourselves.
They were all Sister Mary Something-or-Other, because they belonged to
the Order of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.
The only one whose
other name I can still
remember was Sister Mary Patricia. She
was the choir mistress, which meant that you got her for an hour a day,
no matter what grade you were in. After
four years of daily encounters, I could finally recognize one of them.
(Let's face it, they really do
all look alike.)
Sister Mary Patricia was very tall, very pale, and
very old. In retrospect, she
was probably 4’8” and all of 26; but to an eight-year-old, she
seemed tall and old.
They all seemed tall and old.
As choir mistress, she saw to it
that we learned our notes and the meaning of the word
e•NUN•ci•ate when singing hymns and Gregorian Chants (another useful
job skill). If we were especially
good little boys and girls, and if there was time left over after
rehearsing for Sunday Mass, she would allow us to sing something that
wasn't religious. (Nuns tend
to be into discipline and behavior modification. They could be accused
of brainwashing if they didn't have such a strong union.)
Sister Mary Patricia’s favorite secular song was "Puff,
the Magic Dragon", which she found absolutely charming.
Needless to say, the significance
of the lyrics, with their thinly-veiled allusions to the drug culture of
the 1960s, sailed placidly over her wimpled head.
Getting back to The Secret Garden,
which I must've read a dozen times after I discovered the public
library, and was no longer held hostage by Sister Mary F-I-B.
I doubt if any movie could ever
do justice to the book, simply because the enchantment of the story lies
in the imagination of the
reader (or listener). No producer
could afford to include scenes that would invoke that long, lonely
winter, waiting…waiting…waiting, to find out if the Garden was really
dead, or only sleeping.
On the other hand, the characters
are handled beautifully. There's
little Mary Lennox, spoiled, willful, self-absorbed until she discovers
the Garden and a heretofore unknown cousin; a little boy who’s spoiled,
willful and self-absorbed and ignored by his father who is too
grief-stricken and the self-absorbed to deal with him.
Are we beginning to see a family
trait here?
After the movie, “Jeannie” and I went back to my place to rummage
through old programs from the
Shakespeare Festival, looking for pictures of the Tudor Faire
dancers. “Jeannie” and her
friends had such a good time at the
Renaissance Fair
(yes, it's that time again) last year, that they want to go back again this
year and they want to go in
costume. So we're going to try
and put together a Renaissance Peasant outfit, based loosely on the ones
the dancers wear in some of the pictures.
Why a Peasant instead of a Courtier? Think about it: It's about 90° in the shade, and there's precious little shade. Which would you rather be wearing: "Homespun" cotton or 16 layers of "jewel"-encrusted wool with a long, sausage-shaped pillow tied around your waist to make the Elizabethan skirt stand out?
Right.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |