Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Made for Each Other

I was driving home from Safeway Monday--our second trip of the day, one to get eyedrops for Nolie's pinkeye, the other to get her antibiotics for ear infections--and heard this interview with Berkeley Breathed, the creator of the comic strip Opus, on NPR.

He was talking about making the switch from drawing incisive, cynical political cartoons to writing children's books, called Pete and Pickles.  I was only half-listening, really, but then Breathed said something that caught my attention.  He was talking about how the new books were inspired by a drawing his five-year-old made on a restaurant napkin, of an elephant dropping flowers on the head of a pig.  "Why is he dropping those flowers on the pig?" Breathed asked.  "Because the pig is sad, and doesn't know it," answered his daughter.

Breathed said that in that moment he had an epiphany that, even in the most difficult of times, we somehow find ourselves in the company of those "who were made for us." 

I can't stop thinking about this.  I look at Nolie, snot streaming out of her nose, hair pointing every which direction, and I think, "we were made for each other."  I sit with Addie in my lap, smell her neck, listen to her jabber, and think, "We were made for each other."  I crawl in bed exhausted every night next to my husband, who sleepily throws his arm around my waist, and know we were made for each other.

Maybe it's that the Breathed story required me to rethink what "being made for each other" meant.  I think that phrase always had a sort of sappy, Hollywood-inflected connotation for me, and I rejected it for that reason.  But now, something entirely different.  Not so much destiny, really, but solidarity.  A sense of one-ness.  A reminder that all is not lost.  There is huge grace in that.

2 comments:

  1. What lovely thoughts! Thanks for the new thoughts on that time old phrase. I know EXACTLY what you mean! -Cassandra

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  2. Dude, are you ever going to return to your blog? Miss you!!!

    -Nanny

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