"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.