A Wrinkle in Time and Difficult Children
There was something deeply unsettling to me as a girl about Meg Murray's ugliness. That word is forbidden these days as we strive to love ourselves, to encourage children - particularly girls - to love their bodies, to not let outside forces determine their self worth. And while I fundamentally support that, the truth is also that childhood (and adulthood) can come with a deep disconnect in how we see ourselves and what our bodies and behavior reflect. We can love the work our lungs and limbs do, and still wish they looked or felt different. We can wish we were bolder, kinder, more gregarious. Easier. And the thing that always drew me to, and repulsed me about, Meg was her difficultness. We used to read a lot about difficult children. Or people used to write about them. Mary Lennox. Amy March. Edmund Pevensie. Meg Murray. And while those difficult characteristics often faded as these characters learned something bigger about the world, they were also allowed to retain elements of them. To be whole people - flawed and sometimes unpleasant – and still loved. Both Meg's physical self and her anger, her unpleasantness felt very real to me, unsettling and also exhilerating. I was not a beautiful kid – no coltish limbs and unruly curls. I was unpleasingly plump, a little buck-toothed with a terrible haircut, awkward and bookish and daydreamy. I had a short temper, and an ego about my intelligence, and I spent a lot of time pretending I lived amongst the people in my favorite books. So seeing Meg's heroism in the face of her lack of beauty was kind of awful. Amd wonderful. She's not really unattractive, I'd say to myself. She's not really cringeworthy around other people, rude and emotional. She's not really bad at school. She couldn't be. Because if she is, and she's still the hero, my own physical self is not going to manifest itself as something lovely. At least not now. Maybe someday, but not today and not tomorrow. It didn't. Neither did Meg's. Meg didn't take off her glasses and reveal an inner beauty or an inner sweetness. She was stubborn, difficult, angry, and emotional. She wasn't a pretty girl. She wasn't spunky or tenacious or popular. She was just Meg. Daughter. Sister. Maybe friend. Fiercely determined. And bright, if not gifted. And while Meg would grow up to be a beauty, a scientist and parent, a wife and a partner and a sister, she'd remain that awkward, difficult teenager in her two starring books, and it's hard to describe the profundity of that. We weren't all beautiful kids. Some of us were difficult and challenging, too smart but behind socially. We had trouble making friends. We were too easily influenced by the wills of our parents. We were stubborn and emotional. We were fat. We were spotty. We were too big for the room, afraid of hurting those around us, unable to say to anyway that we were lonely and alone. So watching Meg navigate being a daughter, a sister, a potential friend, a potential savior of all of the people who helped her fulfill all of those roles really was moving. Meg's stubborn love for her family, her sheer bloody singlemindedness allows her to call forth love as a solution to terror. It allows her to accept the the inexplicable magic and science she's faced with. Her fear moves her forward, her mind keeps her steady, her love transcends. And her adolescent awkwardness is a gift, it turns out, because it's transitory. She does grow. She learns how to be bigger and be more, and eventually, to be beautiful – in part because she finds some balance and acceptance in those around her who struggle with bigger, deeper mysteries and losses. But those who love her do so when she is at her ugliest – angry, emotional, raw and viscious and scared. I loved that through Meg, I learned value in emotional outburts. In stubborness. In ugliness. That I saw in her struggles the value of family, of those who loved you unconditionally. That I saw for myself a future of love and learning and hope outside of my own undeniably awkward adolescence. That while I would never develop a faith in a god, I learned a type of faith in science and reason and love that has continued to guide me.
