Heart Warming

I was pleasantly surprised with the ending of Offut's The Same River Twice. Okay, well I don't know if surprised is what I was...I was always hopeful that the ending would be good. That their baby would turn out healthy and Chris would no longer be scared of being a father but he would be excited about the joys that are to come.

In my last readings for this book I did feel like I came across some symbolic aspects to the story. I thought the hurricane seemed to wake Chris up from this life that he's been leading. On page 154 he says, "I realized that I had no idea what I was up to, in fact never had. Twelve years after leaving Kentucky, I was still roving the twentieth century, ineluctably alone and no better at it, merely accustomed to the circumstance." He goes to the Everglades and realizes after that horrible experience that he cannot live life the way he does. He helps to get ready for this hurricane that is supposed to be a cleansing process for Florida, but it also ends up cleansing Chris in a way. It makes him realize that he doesn't want to roam anymore. Right after he leaves he goes to be with his best friend Shadrack and then shortly after that (or that's how he makes it seem in the memoir) he meets his soon to be wife, Rita. But while he's still there battling the storm he says, "Most of my life had been a sequence of halfhearted attempts at self-destruction. Somehow I'd always scampered away--you can't get me, I'm the gingerbread man. Now I faced a worthy death, a death of honor in the face of a stormy god" (page 169). And in my opinion he did face death, death of his previous life.

The reason I believe he was reborn is when his son comes along he says, "His birth was my rebirth. Paternal terror was simply ignorance. The baby knew everything there was to know" (page 185). This child in a way completed him and his journey. He found what he needed. Although his travels grew and matured him into the person he needed to become, his family completed him and gave him purpose. He was scared that he wouldn't be a good father, but as soon as he held his son those fears dissipated. I hope that's what happens for me someday, obviously not as a father. It scares me to death to be completely in charge of the life of another human being. But as soon as I hold my child someday, I want to feel the same way Chris does in this beautiful picture of parenthood.

I'll end with two really good quotes from the last page of the memoir (page 188):

"Nothing has changed except everying."
"He can't learn from my mistakes, only from his own."