Tonight I read my children a story entitled, innocuously, "Morgan's Morning." It had a picture of a horse on it, and later in the book, a unicorn. The cover even included a blurb: "The moral of this story is, sometimes you have to lose in order to gain." My daughter had picked it out at her school's library.
The story, in a nutshell: A foal named Morgan runs away from his mother, disobeying her instructions, happily gallops along a river, following raccoons... tries to cross the river the way they did--by stepping on slippery stones. Well, that foal falls into the river and down a waterfall. Morgan hurts his leg, but manages to swim to the riverbed. The raccoons tell Morgan's mother what happened, but none of the animals at the top of the waterfall can do anything to save Morgan, including his mother, who gives one big sob and walks away, with the other animals following.
They leave Morgan there. TO DIE. I did not read those words to my kids, I just indicated that Morgan was stuck. Morgan calls up to his departing mother, "I love you Mom, I understand." That's a direct quote.
Well, Morgan ends up being "saved" by the Morning Star, who tells him that if he gives up his life among those like him, he can be a unicorn. He'll never be able to see or talk with his family again, but he'll be in some magical wonderland. Morgan decides to do it, instead of dying (or being "stuck" as I indicated).
Yeah. "Sophie's Choice" for the grade-school set.
First of all, I hate this book. But second and more important--it tore my daughter apart. I was watching her as I read it to her. She was gravely concerned, biting her lip, looking stricken. But I kept reading, because she didn't ask me to stop. (She's asked me not to read other things if she didn't like them.)
But, I probably should have just stopped. At the end of the book, she burst into tears. Wracking sobs, actually. It was awful. (My son just sat there, playing with his car, watching her carefully.)
She told me she was sad for Morgan. She wanted to read again the pages describing his fall and how he calls for his mother and she doesn't come. She worried what would happen to him. She just kept sobbing.
It was stunning. She has often shown herself to be a sensitive and sweet girl, but her empathy for Morgan, the horse-turned-unicorn, was unprecedented. I told her the story made me sad, too. I told her that her sadness shows how big her heart is, how loving she is, how good she is. I told her, as her tears flowed unabated, that it was a story, and that the neat thing about stories is that we can imagine what might happen after the story ends. We talked about what might happen next: That maybe the mother ended up finding the unicorn Morgan, that Morgan surprised her... all manner of happier next chapters.
My girl was calming down, but I could tell her mind was still racing with thoughts of poor abandoned Morgan.
Then it hit me.
"You know," I added, "I am not at all like Morgan's mommy. I would never ever, ever, ever, EVER leave you stuck." She froze. Tears stopped. She hung on every word coming out of my mouth.
"Morgan's mom couldn't get her, because she's a horse and can't dive and swim and carry her baby up a big hill. I can. And I would. I would never walk away. I would come get you. I would never, ever, ever, ever leave you."
I've never gotten such a big hug from my daughter. Tight and desperate and true and sweet--the best hug I've ever gotten.
The morals of this story are: (1) read a book before reading it to your child. (2) if you tell your child all the time that you love them and would do anything for her or him, do it one more time.
