Peal Buck's writing isn't too shabby. You know, if you buy into that whole Pulitzer Prize thing, and/or the Nobel Prize brouhaha. As an American who lived a great deal of her life in China, her schtick was exploring the nuances specific to the East... and the West.
We've got a little East meets West going on right now. Family members from Nevada and Utah have amassed here on a tiny island nestled right in from the Atlantic Ocean, to show love and support for The Girl. She gets baptized tomorrow -- something that is actually a very simple, rather humble event. But for the hour-long program, an awful lot of people have flown across the country. And an uncle from Chicago is missing his own daughter's ballet performance and piano recital in order to be here.
We feel very fortunate.
Ms. Buck wrote: "The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people -- no mere father and mother -- as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature welded him into it before he was born."
Emotional security based on connectivity to extended family.
This afternoon we went to a movie with some of the cousins, an uncle, and a grandma... We walked to the park with grandparents and an aunt and some uncles and cousins... And Grandpa bought them all ice cream right before dinner... But it didn't matter that much because dinner was just about hanging out and eating pizza... In short, the day's curriculum was focused on emotional security.
The family tree can provide shade in the summer and shelter in the winter.
