"Space" Suffering and Change

After Carol experienced a near death experience, Jesse began to suffer from horrible depression. Her mom was not a mom at all, addicted to Valium, smoking and drinking, she slept and watched T.V. all day, rarely speaking or eating. Jesse says "I disappeared inside my own body. I had the sensation of walking around and looking at my feet and my hands as if they were only remotely connected to anything I would call myself" (268). She had begun to feel that it was easier simply to retreat into herself, ignoring everyone around her. She had lost all felling of self identity, she was just floating through life trying to block out all the pain, suffering and hardships of everyday life. Despite her father hardly being home at all with his work at the junior college, he even began to notice Jesse's behavior and decided to take her to group therapy. However this really didn't help at all because she felt that what she had done was nothing to the stories of the other teens in the group. So, not wanting to look out of place, she "started to lie" (271). She mad up horrible stories, she even seemed to be outdoing the others, real life stories. Despite the lies, she learned from the experience that she never wanted to do the things that the other people told stories about. Or the things that she made up lies about doing.
In one two years everthig seemed to change. Carol went off to norhern florida to go to College, Jesse, after graduating from high school a year early began attending the junior college where her father worked. She maried a boy she met at college at 17, her father and mother got divorced after her fathers health began to fail. Then Jesse said "We got a divorce. My parents, both ill, both living on my fathers's pension in separate rooms in my rented house, decided to remary" (318). Putting it lightly, her life was a mess. Shortly there after, he father died of a heart attack, and her mother then died just over a year later. However, despite how horrible it all seemed, it was not until all those terrible things had happened that Jessa was really able to move on in her life and make something of herself. Jesse said that "After my parents died, that all change" (322). She had been working menial, low wag jobs, but after their death she got a job as a perfessor, began writing books, remaried, and had a daughter. The think to learn from Jesse Le Kercheval's story, was that no matter what stands in your way, there is always a way to move o and make something of yourself.

"Space" Racism

In the early years of her life Jesse Lee Kercheval lived a very sheltered life, she moved to Cocoa florida from Washington D.C. She lived in a small community in Cocoa and looked at the world through very idealistic eyes. Durring the summer when she was fifteen, she went to a three week YMCA camp. There she see's and hears fist hand the racist ideals that were all over at that time. Not only that, looking back on her life she saw instances where she saw blacks being treated differently and didn't understand why. She had "seen a sign posted in a resturant window" that said "Whites Only" (221). She hadn't understood why and had questioned her mother about it. She recalled that her mother explained what it meant, seeming to be embarrised by Jesse's question and clearly in dissagreement with the sign. Yet after Jesse asked her "But if we won't let them come in our resturants, then they might no let us go in theirs" (222). To young Jesse this seemed obvious. She saw that there was no difference what color your skin was, a resturant was a resturant, no matter who owned it. If only more people could have viewed the world the way she did.
At camp, we see that her ideals have changed slightly, nothing is as simple as she thought it was when she was young. She was friends with black kids at camp it made no difference to her what the color of their skin was, in fact one of her two best friends at camp was a black girl named Celia. There were also two black girls at the camp on scolarships, but they kept to themselves and really had no friends beside each other. Celia didn't like them at all, and when Jesse questioned her she said "they just tell everybody in the world that black people are no better than trash, no better than poor ignorant trash" (224). She thought that because they were on scolarship and had secondhand swimsuits they were making her, a fellow black person, look bad. She strongly believed that no one had to be poor, they just had to work hard. She seemed dissapoined in other black people, like they were being lazy. Yet Jesse, doesn't understand she even says "I guess I thought blacks were better than us" (229). She knew that white people discriminated against black people but she didn't realize that it went the other way. That black people, thought the same thoughts about white people or some against other black people. It just goes to show how she looked down on white people for being racist, how she believed that everyone was the same. Skin color doesn't matter.

"Space" Changing Ideas

As I continue to read about the life of Jesse Lee Kercheval I can not help but be saddened by the loss of her innocence and of her idealistic views. We begin to see a very new Jesse from the one that we had originally gotten to know. She goes from being a young rambunctious girl, to a pre-teen who is forced to face things that someone at her age should not have to deal with. This change became extremely apparent to me when she began to talk about the death of neighbor hood pets and the way they coincided with how life ended up turning out for their owners. It was an extremely gloomy observation for such a young girl to even notice, let alone really think about. Speaking about Arrow, the neighbor’s dog, Jesse says "looking back, I can't help feeling that Arrow's death foreshadowed David's sisters, the first tragedy preparing the way for the next" (157). First the Mizes dog died, he was running full tilt and ran directly into a pole and immediately died. Then only a few years later, the Mizes daughter was involved in a one-man car crash and died instantly. Even now I'm not sure I would have even considered this connection, this intricate weaving of fate. Yet at barely twelve years old, Jesse stated it as simply a harsh fact about life. Then, after her two dogs got in a horrible fight, sending one to the emergency room, Jesse talks about the deeper implications of her parent’s decisions give up one of the dogs. To her family the dogs were part of the family, she wondered what hidden meaning this event could have saying "If Gretel was my mother's four-legged daughter, what did it mean that she was willing to give her away in the name of harmony and practicality?" (159). Jesse considered the dog, Gretel to be the dog version of her, so she actually wondered if, because her parents were willing to give gretel away, if they would also do the same with her. If she just became too much to handle they could just hand her away because it was the easiest thing to do. This really opened my mind to how much the family and even neighborhood you grow up in affects essentially how you’re mind works and what you believe.
Not only did her beliefs and feeling about her family change, her past idealistic views began to change to accept what was, rather than trying to change it. When she was young she dreamed of being an astronaut and saw no reason why she could not accomplish this, after all she was just as capable as any boy was. However, her enthusiasm for the subject decreases and she begins to accept the sexist views of society saying "A year ago, it had seemed impossibly unfair that women couldn't be astronauts, real astronauts. Now I was only bummed that it meant I couldn't blast off in the Maltezo's Airstream and spend ten days nearly alone in "space" with Paul" (166). He focus begins to shift from her hopes and aspirations of the future to what is going on right at the moment. She begins to be interested in boys and not so much about changing society for the better. This seemed ironic to me, because I would think that as one grows up and become more educated they would seek to further themselves and the world. Yet it seems in Jesse's case anyways that as one grows up, they lose their passion, and optimism that they can do anything about it. Her family life continues to collapse and she really starts to make it apparent. She has accepted it, though she doesn't like what has happened she feels powerless to change it. When talking about the prospect of going home after swim practice she says "I hated the idea of being in the house with only Bertha, Lucky, and my drugged mother" (177). In the past we saw her overlooking her mother’s problems, but here really for the first time we see her acknowledge them. She no longer insists on looking at the good side of everything and ignoring the bad. She sees what is there and accepts it, feeling small and hopeless; there is nothing she can do so why bother. It is so sad that such a young girl so full of ideas, optimism, and spunk, is growing up to just embrace the way things are, wither she likes them or not.