166: Nobody's Family Is Going to Change
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From W.B. E.C. Chicago, public radio international, it's American life, I'm out of glass, and I hold in my hands a children's book called Nobody's Family Is Going to Change, published in the 1970s by the same writer who did Harry at the spy, Luis Fitzhough. It is, I have to say, an oddly menacing title Nobody's Family Is Going to Change. Various contributors to our show have joked that it's part of a series for kids, with the little princess who got sick and never woke up, Daddy drinks because you cry, God made the pretty girls pretty because he loved them more, and sharing is for sissies. But in fact, it's a serious and really good, and rather brave little book, Nobody's Family Is Going to Change. There's a family, as you might expect, Sheridan's. They mean disapproving dad, a mom who tries to smooth things over, a son who wants to dance in a show, but is told he can't buy his father, a daughter Emma, who's accused of daydreaming too much, who wishes that her family could be different. Over the course of the book, Emma tries to get her dad to change, to listen to them, to be kind. She joins something called the children's army, which agitates for the notion that it is a child's right to change his or her family. And then finally, towards the end of the book, sitting at dinner, as her father and brother rehashed the same fight that they always have, Emma realizes that her parents will never change, her dad will always be harsh, will never treat her or her brother like he cares about them, and that she can't change him and shouldn't try, and the best she can do is change herself. So, she goes and tells her friends, who have trouble understanding it, there's a scene. What about my father, ask Golden, your father said Saunders is a lost cause, he thinks boys are great and he's never going to think you're anything because you're a girl. Well, says Golden, I can't change that, no, but you can stop wanting him to change, said Saunders. Emma felt like the top of her head would fly off, Saunders got it, the whole thing, that's what I mean, said Emma loudly, that's just what I'm talking about, we have to stop waiting around for them to love us, because it's the 70s, one of the kids suggested they form a consciousness-raising group. The fact is, even those of us who are adults, who know better, who accept our parents and siblings as we hope that they accept us, even we hope, somehow, that maybe they'll change a little, this way or that, it's hard not to hope, and the question's on the table, is nobody's family going to change. Today, three stories that explore whether that might be true, act one, so a Jew, a Christian and a recording crew walk into this bar, and that act a woman travels to Alaska thinking that maybe her brother might change a little, as he hopes that she'll change a little too, act two, matching outfits not included, the story of two sisters, now in their 70s, who have preserved the same relationship they had as girls, for better or worse, act three, the artist formerly known as Dr. Sarkin, what happens when you want your dad to change, and he wants to change, but there is literally nothing that can be done to change him, stay with us. Mark and I were very close when we were small, we traveled a lot, so we really only had each other for many months at a time, we went to Ghana and Switzerland, Germany, sometimes for many months at a time when my dad was teaching, so my earliest memories are just of this little family unit, my dad, my mother, my brother and me. Julie and I were just, we were always together, we were the main, you know, we were, she and I were, you know, we had each other, we'd play and talk and stuff, and I don't think we, I don't even remember fighting at all until the year my dad died and we moved to New
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