Time for Tears

Anne with an E

I'm having a hard time dealing with my emotions in this hard time of Covid-19.

It is likely that my children and grandchildren will not be able to travel from Texas for a visit this summer. My life is out of my control. I am being kept away from my friends. No in-person exercise classes. No going to coffee shops or the library or museums or movie theaters.

Standard television fare other than the news has not been my cup of tea for many years. And now even the news is more upsetting than regular television. The local news, the national news, the BBC world news just make me angry or scared or so sad I don't think I can stand it. Not even PBS's News Hour with Jeremy Brown covering the Arts and Culture from his home salves my heart for long.

Thank goodness for Netflix, Brit Box, Amazon Prime, MHz, and TED.com. I can watch what I need and what I want, when I want. With my breakfast to start my day. Late at night if I can't sleep. Any time when I can't be doing what it is I would rather be doing.

These online television options offer all kinds of escapism, abundant opportunities for enlightenment, humor both sharp and gentle, and inspiration.

Oddly enough the show that is most effective at helping me deal with the heavy sadness, the sorrow I feel for the whole world, is the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Anne with an E. It's based on the novel Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, published in 1908.



"Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies, making it one of the best selling books worldwide. The first in an anthology series, Montgomery wrote numerous sequels, and since her death, another sequel has been published, as well as an authorized prequel. The original book is taught to students around the world." -- Wikipedia

And I've never read any of these books. How did I miss them? Oh, well. I'm a slow reader. I didn't read a Bobbsey Twins book until I was a Junior in High School or a Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House book until my daughter was reading them. But I did read all of  Louisa May Alcott's novels. That counts, right?!





I've also not watched any other television or movie productions of the Anne of Green Gables stories. To be honest, I thought they would be children's stories. Treacle and pablum.


The Canadian television series Anne with an E, created by Moira Walley-Beckett, must be an adaptation rather than a faithful rendering of the books. I can't imagine that a writer who wrote during the early 20th Century would be so progressive in their thinking. The TV series deals with the very harsh realities of the late 19th Century that an orphan most certainly must have dealt with -- bullying and bigotry against all and sundry who were somehow different from the dominant white, English-speaking, Canadian culture. (An awakening for me. I grew up believing those attitudes unique to my Oklahoma -- here meaning "Southern" -- roots.) And the equally harsh realities of life and death due to the limitations of medical science at that time.




Anne was an orphan, farmed out to whatever family would take her in. She was treated like a servant or worse until she was sent to the elderly Cuthbert siblings, Marilla and Matthew, played by Geraldine James and R.H. Thomson. Anne, played by Amybeth McNulty, was sent to the Cuthberts in error. They had requested a boy whom they expected to help them work the farm.




Marilla and Matthew have grown old and sterile, untouched by the world beyond Prince Edward Island, the culture into which they were born. Anne, with her life-saving imaginary world, turns their prim and proper life upside down. Indeed, the whole community of Avonlea's.

Life for these characters is hard. Some people do mean, unacceptable things to them. Sometimes their own attitudes cause them great pain. Some of them never change.  People die. A baby is born. Some of the people do change.  And I cry.

But the sorrows and joys are not gratuitous or unrealistic. Somehow, shedding tears for these characters' sorrows and joys in their very harsh time is cathartic for me living in our own very harsh time.

Whether for their sorrows or joys, or for ours, it is a time for tears and tears help.