MOTHER
MY HOUSE IS MOVING PAST
is a lyric and dramatic account of growing up and leaving home. The
story of childhood's loves and losses, adolescence' prizes and pains,
early adulthood's ripening insight is told from the varying points of
view of a young girl though the story is each of ours. The nine collages
range from "Bright Apple" with its regimented elementary school
days in New York; to "Trophies" with its competition and attachment
of summer camp; and "Dreams on Ivory" with its indomitable
piano lessons; through the twisting family relationships of "Always
the Eleventh of June" and "My Father's Name is Abraham";
to the compelling reshaping of this world and its values into the more
individualized ones of "Hold I Hear the Window Cracking" and
"Oh the Cherry Trees They Flower." The voice is the inner
one of a child, then the inner one of an emerging adult; the vision
is of first myth. Then first reality.
Woven in
a rich fabric of image, symbol, and motif, the narrative centers in
the house, the place we start out from, and however much we protest
to the contrary, are reluctant to leave. We do not want to lose the
world we know and love however painful the passage and however compelling
the world beyond it. Going forward though is not losing contact with
the past; it is making a deeper connection with it. It is that connection,
in fact, that enables us to move on. When we really leave home, we first
return to it and hold it close again; when we set out to make our own
home, we connect with our roots and let go.
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