Love is All that Matters

Author”s Note: I am reading the book Secret Life of Bees, the book is about a young girl and her miserable life. In this piece I worked on stretching my thoughts, so you have the details you need to understand the story.

 

Love is what makes the world go ‘round. The first time  you experience love is from your parents, or even more so from your mom. When you don’t have a mom type figure in your life you won’t experience the being loved type feeling as a child. That brings sort of an awkward feeling into children. Most children without mothers turn to a neighbor, big sister, or aunt as a mom-type figure. It doesn’t matter if you are biologically related. All you need to be a mother type figure is unconditional love for a child.

In the book Secret Life of Bees Lily struggles with a loss of love.  From early on, she has to learn to live without her own mother. She was told that her mom has died, and that it was her fault! Throughout her life Lily felt abandoned and alone. When Lily went through awkward phases she had no one to help her through them.  Without her mom Lily’s house felt like a house not a home.

Without her mom Lily is stuck with her dad. Lily doesn’t feel any love from her dad. She calls him T-Ray, because dad isn’t really a name that fits for him. He is a mean, sinister, man. When Lily does something bad T-Ray makes Lily kneel on grits for hours and hours on end. Grits are a comfort food and for him to use them for punishment symbolizes how non-loving he is. T-Ray also makes Lily work in a peach stand on the side of the road, where she sits and does nothing day after day. Peaches area  symbol of innocence. Lily’s confinement to the peach stand at the side of the road is like Kidd telling us that Lily is simply in a holding pattern, waiting for her innocence to be lost. T-Ray has been awful to Lily her whole life; which makes her go through life by herself

After Lily’s mom died her relationship with Rosaleen grew closer and closer. Rosaleen talked to Lily when she was feeling sad. Lily helped Rosaleen out of very difficult situations. Rosaleen is a very tough, brave, stubborn, and quite frank woman. She always has something say, and you might not always like it. Kidd makes Rosaleen’s character so different from Virgin Mary so it’s easily shown that it doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad to love a child.

One of the ways all of us from time to time, replaces our own mother with a mother figure, is the use of the Virgin Mary. One day after Lily’s mom died she came across a box in her attic. In the box was a picture of her mom, a pair of white gloves, and a picture of The Virgin Mary. Upon realizing the importance of these items to her mom, she treasured them. Lily noticed her mother’s devotion to Mary. She felt that it would be important to her mom to have a relationship with Mary as well. Throughout the story Virgin Mary keeps on popping up. Lily finds a picture of her on a jar of Honey, and a statue of her in a house she stays at. The presence of Mary everywhere gives Lily the presence of her mother wherever she is. When Lily had a problem she prayed to Mary for help. Mary always answered Lily’s prayers. Lily imagined Mary to be a graceful, obedient, loving, and forgiving woman.

While reading “Secret Life of Bees” I realized that if your biological mother isn’t so great you can still have a mother. It doesn’t matter that Lily isn’t biologically related to Rosaleen or Virgin Mary. Rosaleen and Virgin Mary are so different, but the one thing they have in common is that they care for Lily so much.

If you have lost a mom or a dad, or if they just aren’t very good parents you can still have parents. There is someone out there that cares or loves you and those people are your parents.  Love is all that matters.