The Gilmore Book Club

 Why leaving home could be the best decision you ever make

You’ve heard the tale of two cities, but have you heard the tale about three? Starkfield, Greenville, and Hartford. You can only find two of these on a map, but even still, all three are very real and could have an impact on each of our lives.

We don’t get to choose where we grow up; our parents choose that for us, just as their parents chose for them. For me, it was Greenville, South Carolina. It’s one of those larger than some, smaller than others, places. It’s definitely not as small as Stars Hollow, the teeny-tiny town where the Gilmore girls live and everyone knows everyone, and you can walk to the other side of town in about twenty minutes.

Lorelai Gilmore grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, a good-sized city- and isn’t fictional like Stars Hollow. She lived in a stately home with maids and a chef and everything she could ever want- except she didn’t want any of it.

And then we have Ethan Frome whose childhood- and adulthood- home is in Starkfield, Massachusetts. Starkfield is more along the lines of Stars Hollow in size than Hartford or Greenville. And as its name implies, there’s not much there.

Ethan, Lorelai, and I, we all had to get out of the town where we grew up. All three of us made it out, but one was pulled back and was trapped. 

Our first meeting with Ethan Frome is more of a sighting than an actual meeting. The narrator notices the scar on Ethan’s face, and his whole body seems to bear the invisible weight and anguish of the trauma associated with that scar. But at the moment, there is only one explanation for his appearance: he’s seen too many winters. But as the narrator gets to know Ethan, we find out that the winter is only one of the characters in Ethan’s story.

Ethan is a caretaker. He came back from school to take care of his parents and their struggling farm. Then the woman who came to help Ethan, Zeena, became his wife after his parents died, but she also fell ill, and Ethan’s circumstances hardly changed. And then Mattie comes to the farm. Her job is to help care for Zeena and help out around the house. In a few sweet and shy interactions, Mattie and Ethan fall in love. For a time, the weight of Ethan’s responsibilities begins to lift. The lovers consider running away, but Zeena’s illness among other concerns, tethers them to Starkfield. And so, the star-crossed lovers contemplate what Romeo and Juliet had attempted and completed before them, but at the last minute, decide their love is better when kept alive. That’s when tragedy strikes. A seemingly innocent and romantic moon-lit sledding outing turns disastrous when Ethan and Mattie crash into an enormous tree. Ethan is left with the aforementioned scar, and Mattie barely survives. Mattie has no other family to care for her, so she returns home with the Fromes, to live out the rest of her life with the man she loves- and his wife. And once again, after all the ecstasy and angst of love, Ethan’s life is right back where it started: taking care of the ailing, working on the farm, and resigning himself to a life sentence in Starkfield.

From the subject of aggravation of everyday people to the symbolism of evil and death in literature, winter is often viewed and discussed with a myriad of negative descriptions and feelings, among them being dismay, annoyance, and fear. But I’ve never seen winter that way. I’ve always seen the magic of chilly nights, the beauty of snowflakes, and the purity of a world covered in white.  Since the beginning of time, we’ve attributed our state of being to the seasons, and even used powerful beings as explanations for what we did not understand, but the only thing causing winter, is nature, just following the progression of the way our world works. And the summer is just as prone to its annoyances and frustrations. No, we cannot blame the winter alone for Ethan’s state.

Perhaps, Ethan has seen too many of the wrong kind of winters, and summers too. Perhaps, he’s just endured too many seasons in a place where he didn’t belong.  I spent four years living through the windy winters of Chicago, and I loved every minute of it. Sure, weather can be annoying, but nature is not what slowly chips away at our souls. Our relationships with others, the feeling of, or absence of, belonging, and finding your place in the world- those are things that can affect us so much more than the daily repetition of frozen water falling from the sky.  

Every time it snowed, every time the Chicago river was coated with chunks of ice, every time the cold whipped through the grid-like streets, I was in heaven. I live in New York now, which by comparison is pretty mild, but winter is still my favorite time of the year. But back in South Carolina, winter is close to non-existent. There’s occasionally some ice, but hardly any snow, and I’ve spent way too many Christmases in short-sleeved shirts. I still loved winter, but not that kind of winter, and to be honest, I didn’t really love anything about South Carolina. Until I went to college, it was all I had ever known. We had lived in Michigan and Ohio for a year or so, but I was way too young to remember any of that. And for a while, I was way too young to know what was going on at all, but by first grade, I had figured out that I didn’t really belong there. Yes, it was my home, but only because my family and friends were there.  It wasn’t where I wanted to be. Chicago immediately felt like home, and I kept that feeling every day I was there, but at six years old, I didn’t know that feeling could exist. All I knew was I didn’t belong, and I had to get out. And years of harboring such feelings can wreak more havoc on your soul than a snowstorm.  

Lorelai Gilmore felt the same. From a young age, she felt stifled amongst the proper parties with candlesticks six inches apart and the petticoats and crinolines that kept her from running and playing like other children. Lorelai would dream of running off to Europe, flipping through her parents’ travel books to plan her adventure, but it wasn’t until Lorelai got pregnant that she finally got out of her parent’s house. Now I don’t usually compare myself to Lorelai, I’m usually more of a Rory, but Lorelai and I both have that drive to find our true home, that will to make things work. And she made her way to Stars Hollow. For Lorelai, that’s where she found a home. She loved working at the Independence Inn, participating in town meetings and fundraisers, and getting to know all the delightful characters in Stars Hollow. She loves that her bank teller can’t count, that Kirk shows up in a different job every week, and that she knows all of her neighbor’s garden gnomes by name. And Lorelai never wants to live anywhere else.

The reader doesn’t know much about Ethan’s escape from Starkfield, only that he left to pursue his education and returned once his parents grew ill. Ethan fondly remembers the time he spent gleaning knowledge from books, and often wishes he could return to that former state, but now that he’s back in Starkfield, he can’t see a way out again. 

It can be so hard to leave all you’ve ever known and move to a place where you don’t know anyone. It can be scary and sometimes lonely, but it’s also exciting, exciting to create for yourself the world you’ve always wanted to live in, exciting to choose everything for yourself, exciting to open up your future to so many new possibilities. People have told me I was brave for moving to new places where I would have to build a life from scratch, but I didn’t always see it that way. In my mind, staying was the scarier option. Staying meant being content with a way of life that I didn’t love. Staying meant accepting that my life would never be different. Staying meant I’d always feel like I was trapped in someone else’s life. And so, I chose to leave and seek out the life I’d always dreamed of. 

I’m still chasing dreams and still working on achieving everything I’ve ever wanted, but living in cities like Chicago and New York, I’ve felt at home immediately. And I love that I get the feeling that all I’ve ever wanted seems like it’s just right around the corner waiting for me to come get it. It’s difficult to be far from my family, but moving away, was definitely the right decision for me.

We talk a lot about self-care these days, an act or several acts that may have previously been viewed as selfish, but it’s so much more than taking a long bath or doing some yoga. The entire idea centers on the fact that if you can’t take care of yourself, how could you possibly take care of others? It’s like putting on your oxygen mask on first before helping others. You can only give your best to everyone else if you’re at your best first. My life would have been so different had I stayed, and I would have been so different. I too could have turned into the curmudgeony Ethan we see at the beginning of the novel-someone who keeps to themselves, doesn’t create or contribute, and whose life is stuck in perpetual and dulling unhappiness. And look at Lorelai, all her high school derelicts turned into responsibility and dedication when she started her life in Stars Hollow. Who knows what trouble she’d be causing if she had remained in Hartford? Making that move is perhaps one of the biggest and most influential acts of self-care.  It saved me and Lorelai, and perhaps it could have saved Ethan.

 I wonder what would have happened if he and Zeena had moved to another town where the climate was warmer and his farm could have prospered. What would have happened if he, Zeena, and Mattie had moved to a place where no one knew their tragic story and they could start over? Who would Ethan be now if he’d asked Zeena to care for his parents while he stayed in school? Maybe he’d have a happier marriage with Zeena, or maybe he would have never married her at all and would be happy with a new career and the life he’d chosen. But none of that happened. Ethan’s return to Starkfield sealed his fate.

 The only consolation I can take from Ethan’s story is that I can choose differently. I can choose to find a place that’s truly my home and create the life I want.

What will you choose?

Rory’s Recommended Reading

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