Be. Loved.

As a teenage girl, I am fascinated by love. Born into fairy tales and raised on a steady diet of princesses and dashing knights, I am a creature of romance, a child of story. I was never taught how to imagine; rather, it seems imagination taught me how to form muscle and flesh into the semblance of a human. Often, I feel like a changeling, stealing in from the forest in the shape of a person, with a faerie heart beating out heat underneath. It is little wonder, then, that I was drawn to Beloved by Toni Morrison simply for its title.

'Beloved' is a nickname between my dear friend Shelby and I; we trade the word like a precious stone when we need comfort or protection. Beloved. Tirzah. Blessed city. Like God in the desert, we use the word when we mean it, and never again. Cheap endearments---sweetheart, honey, darling---fall from my lips like rain, but 'Beloved' is for special occassions, dressed-up love. Thick love. 'Cause thin love ain't love at all.

So what does this novel tell us about identity, as it journeys into love and loss and the past and the tenuousness of the future?

1. Love is not a constant, but it is constant. We are not responsible for defining love for everyone; that is too great of a task to undertake in many lifetimes. But love---the nature of it, the shape of it, real and persistant and unselfish---that love is constant. It lasts. It may change, but like salt on the skin after a dip in the ocean, it leaves an echo. We are defined by those we CONTINUE to love, are DETERMINED to love, despite or because of their deserving.


2. Our past is our present, and our future. Who we were directly informs who we are today, and who we will become. Unless we can lay down our "sword and shield", put our memories to rest, we will suffer in the future as we suffered in the past and can find no peace in the present.


3. Anything dead coming back to life hurts.


4. We cannot be all things to all people. Nor should we be just one thing. Sethe is more than a mother. Denver is more than a daughter. Humans have dimensions and space and layers.


5. Story makes us human. Humaness makes us tell stories.

When we raise our daughters on fairy tales, sometimes we leave bits out. Snow White's stepmother rarely dances to her death at the wedding, but when the Brothers' Grimm told the tale she was tap-dancing in heated iron shoes. Until she died. We don't believe Ariel is washed away as sea foam and rarely do Cinderella's sisters go blind for their evil.

It seems that they are not all stories to be passed on.

Certainly no clamour for a kiss.

Beloved.