Tom Wingo, in Pat Conroy's...
Illustration
Tom Wingo, in Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, runs with tears in his face from his valley of dry, dead bones. (Ezekiel 37:1-14)
Now I ran heavily, desperately, away from the wife who had taken a lover because I had failed her as lover, away from the sister too quick with blades, away from the mother who did not understand the awful history of mothers and sons. I was running away from that history, I thought --that bitter, outrageous slice of Americana that was my own failed life --or toward a new phase of that history. I slowed down, sweating, exhausted. I began walking toward the house.
There are so many of us who look at our lives and they look like a valley of dead bones, like Tom's life, and we want to run away.
Now I ran heavily, desperately, away from the wife who had taken a lover because I had failed her as lover, away from the sister too quick with blades, away from the mother who did not understand the awful history of mothers and sons. I was running away from that history, I thought --that bitter, outrageous slice of Americana that was my own failed life --or toward a new phase of that history. I slowed down, sweating, exhausted. I began walking toward the house.
There are so many of us who look at our lives and they look like a valley of dead bones, like Tom's life, and we want to run away.
