Outside reading! Cha cha cha. (#3)

Throughout the novel, The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman, the reader gets a clear perspective on mother-daughter conflict. It directs all the Sparrow womens' relationships with one another. Every reply has a hint of sarcasm, and every comment is twisted into an insult. Even Jenny proclaims, "You take everything I say and turn it around" (186). Later in the argument, Stella bites back with, "Everything was perfect until you got here, everything was absolutely fine" (187). Talk about sassy. After this spat between mother and daughter, grandmother Elinor comforts her daughter, Jenny. She evens makes her laugh a little. These small gestures are what help the three women survive together under the same roof. However, several pages later Elinor says, "Do you realize you never agree with me? If I said it was noon, you wouldn't care if the sun was in the center of the sky. You'd tell me it was nighttime. You'd want to argue no matter what" (195). How can these ladies even bear to argue and bicker over every detail? Do they have some idea in their heads that none of them could ever begin to understand the struggle of another? That mothers can never understand their daughters, and daughters their mothers? Yes...maybe that is the problem. On Stella's birthday, she declares to a close friend, "I hate my mother...She watches over me like I'm some sort of wilting flower" (37). Many daughters today fell as if their mothers hate them, even though they do not. They strive, as do the Sparrow women, for independence. Rebellion. Love. Risk. They have a thirst for it. A chronic hunger. Although they do desire all of these things, mothers will always be waiting. Always willing to forgive. As in Jenny and Elinor's case. Jenny awoke in the middle of the night and walks into her mother's bedroom like a child who had just experienced a nightmare. As she crawls into the bed, the author describes, "There was a woman beside her with black hair who appeared to be her daughter. Could that be real? Wasn't that an impossible thing, no more likely than a dish that could grow legs and run away over the moon or a roomful of straw spun into gold?" (244). Elinor already believed the impossible could never happen and just then, in that very moment, she had been proven wrong. Even though it was unspoken, both of them knew, "After all this time, they forgave each other on this morning in May when the world was green, when bees circled the laurel, when words didn't need to be spoken, when anything that had been lost could still be found" (244). What more could be given that is more valuable than forgiveness and knowing that the impossible can be achieved?