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Show Years of Fulfillment 253 passage across its rock-strewn bed. The "sobs and aches and groans" of the water suggest human suffering, "the sorrows" that "are harmonized" to give very little evidence of the agony below." The poem's title, "Growth," suggests this acceptance and reconciliation of suffering to be the process of human devel opment, especially as the speaker, presumably Madelyn, claims to know "how the river feels." During these years Madelyn had come to appreciate the absurdities as well as the more positive experiences of life. In fact, she came to enjoy less serious poetry, as for example the light satirical verse of Dorothy Parker. Parker's sardonic wit, as in "Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses;" her flippant humor, as in "Four be the things I'd been better with out:/ Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt," tickled Madelyn, and she enjoyed reading such bon mots to her family. Madelyn also identified with the treatments of frustrated love and cheated ide alism in Parker's short stories. As for her dreams of being a writer, Madelyn had become reconciled to her life as a wife, mother, and teacher. She had washed diapers, pushed strollers, read to her children, presided over slumber parties, packed lunches, put on Band-aids, told her daughters the "facts of life," helped her sons earn Boy Scout merit badges, and sat on numerous committees. But in the process she had grown richer and deeper. As she wrote and ser monized and gave discourses, she spoke as a more developed self. What she did was not trivial; her domestic and ranch life was a fruitful source for the tropes and figures of her poems; her life, although not ecstatic, was both creative and fulfilling. One day she confessed to her children: "You know, if I had really wanted to make writing my life career, I would have done it. I now realize I was merely using family life as an excuse. I was meant to be a teacher, and I think I have been a good one." Madelyn lived her own life; she also lived the life of her time. A woman of talent, education, and awareness, she was a leader in the new generation of Latter-day Saint women emerging in the Twentieth Century. Born and educated during Mormonism's period of transition, she and her circle felt free to move out of Mormon villages and communities into "the world," whether in |
