Lucy Barton, A Snail, & Me
Recently I’ve been reflecting on my experience of having very little access to ‘popular culture’ growing up. It’s interesting to consider how this experience interacted with my development and - paired with learning to be a people pleaser at a very young age (currently trying to unlearn) - created a sense of isolation that I carried into my adulthood.
Lucy Barton & Me - The act of appearing ‘normal’
I’m currently reading the book My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, and it’s the first time I’ve come across a description of cultural disconnection that so closely resembles my own.
My experiences are not the same as the character of Lucy Barton, but there are some similarities that resonate with me. In the small fishing village where I grew up, I longed to fit in, but I was isolated from the shared cultural references of my peers. Unlike Lucy Barton - whose upbringing was completely void of any form of media - we had music, books, and videos. However, the media my parents chose to include in our household were different to the other families in the village.
Lucy Barton grows up in extreme poverty in a family who had no interest in keeping abreast of world events, not to mention cultural media. Whilst we had very limited money growing up (my parents both made low incomes which placed us technically below the poverty line), we did have everything we needed – enough food, heat, and a house. I believe financial constraints played a part in what cultural material was available to me, but that a part of it was down to the choices my parents made based on their preferences and values.
For example, similar to Lucy Barton’s parents, my parents didn’t show an interest in world news - to my memory they never bought newspapers and if the news came on the radio it was switched off immediately. But, unlike Lucy Barton’s parents, my parents placed high value on books and music. To cut costs - I was told - we didn’t have a TV license, however we did regularly rent VHS to watch at home.
We certainly had music in the house - I remember this mostly consisting of my dad’s collection of records from the 70s and 80s, and later, music he downloaded from the internet. We also had lots (and lots) of books.
When I was around 7 years old, my classmates all wanted to dress up as the Spice Girls for Halloween but I had no idea what the band members looked like and had to ask my peers to describe them to me. Over time, I started to shy away from the reactions I would get – “you know the song I’m talking about, of course you do!”; “did you see the new episode of that TV show last night? We all saw it!”. People genuinely couldn’t believe I didn’t have the same references as them, because, it appeared, almost everyone else in my class did. Even as an adult I am faced with the same disbelief from others on a regular basis. If I don’t know a TV show or song from the 90s, I’ll often be met with ‘Oh it must have been before your time – you’re too young to remember it!’. Flattering, perhaps, but untrue. I just don’t seem to have the same reference points as many others.
Early on I got into the habit of glossing over that fact that I didn’t ‘get’ references to TV shows, music or cultural events because I realised that my ignorance shone an unwelcome spotlight on me. I didn’t have the confidence to stand in my own experience. I believed that my own experience was a bother to other people, leading to an overwhelming desire to avoid contradicting anyone (I reflected on this a bit in my previous blog post ‘A Recovering People Pleaser’). By letting others believe I was following and participating in their conversations about topics that eluded me, I believed I was letting them have their way quickly and efficiently, thus keeping myself safe from their displeasure.
In the book, Lucy Barton, who grew up with no TV or magazines, was completely isolated from the cultural references of her peers. The author describes Lucy as an adult, pretending to understand references to movies, TV shows and ‘common knowledge’ - something I’ve found myself doing in my adult life also. She writes about Lucy’s sense of being invisible yet having the spotlight on her, which I can relate to; if I admit I don’t know, then the spotlight is on me, but if I pretend I do know, I quickly have nothing more to contribute to the topic (having no real knowledge of it) and I chameleon myself into invisibility.
The author also talks about Lucy having to ‘catch up’ on the world around her as an adult living in New York City, after leaving the isolated confines of her childhood home in a remote area. For me, this is relatable because I often feel that when I left home I entered the ‘real world’ unequipped - without the tools required to survive. I seem to live life with a feeling that to get to where I need to, it takes a lot of ‘homework’, meaning I do a lot of work behind the scenes to show up and appear what I hope is normal or acceptable. I am happy to say that I am, slowly, learning to put down that burden and have been experiencing beautiful flashes of relief and joy when I understand, even if just for a moment, that I am ok to show up as I am without all the extra effort, or when I overcome my fear of displeasing others to be clear about something that I do or don’t want or like.
A snail’s pace
Recently, I was sitting in my friend Laura’s* living room, catching up while her children played and drew pictures around us. I described to Laura my recent experience of coordinating the construction of a large scale vertical garden called the ‘Grow Dome’, a structure which first came to life as part of my commissioned work with Aberdeen Performing Arts in 2022, and recently found a permanent home at the James Hutton Institute (JHI). I oversaw the rebuild of the Grow Dome in January. The team I had for the rebuild were previously unknown to me, but they all knew each other because they all worked together. I explained to Laura how it took the team about 2 hours before they started to trust my judgement, during which time they ignored my guidance, leading to them having to deconstruct and rebuild. (I wrote about this experience in a previous blog post “The Grow Dome lives on: On stepping into leadership and the value of a kick-ass partner-in-crime!”).
Overhearing us, Laura’s son Felix* said two wonderful things.
Firstly, he said – ‘that sounds like my new primary school’. Already, at 8 years old, Felix demonstrated an understanding of forming relationships that I feel I’ve only just begun to grasp at 37 years old; I can’t expect people to know my good intentions or understand my friendliness or kindness just by looking at me. Further to that, I can’t expect that everyone I come across in life will want to be my friend, no matter how good my intentions are.
Felix understood that it was going to take time for him to make friends at his new school. After years of bending myself into uncomfortable shapes to please other people, proffering smiles and unthreatening eye contact with anyone I meet, and often finding myself socially dismissed despite of (because of?) this, I’m just now starting to learn and embody something that Felix seems to be grasping pretty well already – that making friends takes consistently showing up as yourself over time. Showing up just as me, without hiding who I am, is the honest route, and the way to building authentic relationships. It might feel uncomfortable at first, and it might take time, but it’s OK if it takes time.
His other take was this: “2 hours… that’s how long it would take a snail to get from one side of this room to the other.”
Maria Popova, on her blog The Marginalian, says of poetry “[it has] a way of finding the intimate in the universal and the universal in the intimate”. By connecting my experience leading a small construction team, to his experience at primary school, and both of these to the experience of a snail, Felix was speaking poetry.
Maria Popova also writes:
“Anything you lavish with attention will become a mirror, a portal, a lens on the meaning of life — a dandelion, a muskrat, a mountain.
A snail.”
For a moment, Felix drew me into the world of the snail, inviting me to dwell on the experience of one small creature who traverses the same world as me, but measures it very differently. This made the two hours I spent building trust with a group of strangers seem rather short in the scheme of things, and also allowed me to connect with a sense of pride that I had persevered with the build, and that I placed enough trust in myself and in the team to let things unfold and take the time they needed to. Just as Felix was doing at his primary school - in an unfamiliar, daunting situation, he was using patience, and he was persevering, trusting himself and letting things take the time they needed to.
Taking my time
I’ve given myself a rule that I can only read sections of My Name Is Lucy Barton in cafes or pubs, in order to keep the reading conditions contained. This is so that the emotional responses the book elicits in me can be caught and held by the chatter and laughter of these public spaces. If I let these emotional resonances ricochet off the walls of the quiet confines of my home, I fear that they will keep echoing back to me and I will never be able to rest.
Because of my self-imposed restrictions, I am only about halfway through the book, despite having started it over 6 months ago.
Felix’s wise words served as a reminder that it’s ok if things takes time - healing, making new friends, getting somewhere you want to be, reading a book that is slowly rocking your boat by speaking to deep parts of yourself that crave to have a light shone on them.
*names have been changed for anonymity
