Can we work it out? Can we be a family?
I promise I'll be better, Mommy I'll do anything
Can we work it out? Can we be a family?
I promise I'll be better, Daddy please don't leave
In our family portrait we look pretty happy
We look pretty normal, let's go back to that
In our family portrait we look pretty happy
Let's play pretend, act like it goes naturally
These are some of the lyrics in Pink’s “Family Portrait.” This song popped into my head when I was thinking about Mariah and Lewis and their four children and their so-called “perfect family.” Lewis and Mariah are a blessed couple—handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Lucy explains their faultless relationship saying, “They did not have what looked like a quarrel. They were always just passing through this room, as if it were a way station” (Kincaid 86). And if Lucy didn’t know better, she would have thought, “What a happy family!” (87).
It seems to me that Lewis and Mariah are infected with the perfect family syndrome. Whether or not this “syndrome” actually exists is rather questionable. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a perfect family. Even the families that do appear perfect on the outside have their troubles and tribulations. “All of them, mother and father and four children, looked healthy, robust—everything about them solid, authentic; but I was looking at ruins, and I knew it right then” (88). What Lucy was looking at was the façade of a blissful family, but she is noticing the cracks in their beautiful veneer. As it was apparent to me, it is evident to Lucy that Lewis and Mariah’s love is fictitious. Family life is often romanticized, but it is almost always filled with frictions and tensions. Difficulties within families are commonplace.
Don’t you think that in the midst of all this family falsehood and truth we just need to find a happy medium?
2 comments:
Great blog Olivia,
but I am going to have to disagree when you say Lewis and Mariah's love is fictitious. I don't think their love is imaginary for one minute. For Lewis and Mariah to get married and have children, requires the two to fall in love at some point. Granted, their love right now is not the same as it was, nor will it probably ever have hope of regaining the status, but I think they do still love each other... Or, at least Mariah still loves Lewis.
I agree, I think that they had to be in love at some point. We only see a brief amount of time in their marriage but their relationship goes farther back than Lucy can explain.
But I really liked your entry on the "perfect family syndrome" and I would agree that families should be true to themselves and stop striving to put on an act to make themselves look perfect.
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