by Mel cross posted from her blog When Cows and Kids Collide
All quoted sections of the book are in blue
This book does have some fun side-effects. My sister-in-law offered to lend me any and all books from her house to stop me from continuing to read this book. The offer was tempting, but inflicting this book on my family is sweet. (Reading chunks aloud….it’s a twisted pleasure for me.)
I thought I was awkward teenager. I was nervous around boys, not very sure how to dress for my figure, and never really sure what the hell I was doing.
In hindsight, I was exactly as awkward as every teenager is.
The saving grace for me was that my parents always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. They supported my academic strengths and let me choose my extracurricular activities which is how they ended up with a daughter who earned varsity letters in theater, choir, and academics, participated in district and state level choir competitions, and was on a math competition team that earned 3rd place at states. (My only “regret” is that varsity jackets/sweaters were out of style when I was in HS; otherwise I would have had a near-perfect geek jacket. Oh, well….)
- This sounds real. I went to a Catholic school and there were definitely young teenager who were ready and willing to train to be “spiritual warriors”. It’s a wonderful and generally transient type of optimism found in adolescents.
- The flip side of this exuberant optimism is the absolute lack of life experience to help ground expectations in reality. I had several friends who were writing books or making films or nursing athletic dreams that were as unrealistic and absurd as the Botkin Sisters teenage dreams.
- Why do I feel bad for the Botkin Sisters? Well, their parents convinced them of the next big point.
- The Botkin take the term “brothers” in the Bible literally.
- I’ve been pruning cherry trees on our farm. Pruning is as much an art as an agricultural science. The first step – always – is to look at the entire natural shape of the tree. Each tree grows differently. A pruner can force a tree to grow into nearly any shape – but the resulting tree will be weak and susceptible to injury. A wise pruner augments the natural shape of the tree to guide the tree into the strongest shape possible so the tree will bear fruit for years.
- Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin used homeschooling and literalistic Bible interpretations to warp the natural inclinations of their daughters. Anna Sophia and Elizabeth as young teenagers wanted to lead projects that changed their community and their world. Instead of shaping those inclinations into the community outreach activities they so badly wanted to do, the Botkin parents obliterated the strongest portions of their daughters personalities and desires and instead tried to force them backwards into the family cult.
- The results show in the poisonous cankers that ooze out throughout the book. The swipes that the Botkin sisters take at women who accomplished goals, the petulant dismissal of traditional acts of charity and education, the sad attempts to equate loss of “men” to starvation – this is the result of the pruning that Geoffrey and Victoria Botkins did to their daughters as young teens. Geoffrey and Victoria Botkins be ashamed; their daughters have been crippled by their parents’ choices.
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