When Alice fell down the rabbit
hole in her Adventures in Wonderland, she was chasing the White Rabbit. When I
fall down into a rabbit hole, it, too, means that my own White Rabbit, or
curiosity, has gotten the best of me. I’ve been known to lose significant
chunks of time only to reappear to meet my demands in life. As a college
student, this happened in the library - either in the drawers of extensive card
catalogs or in the endless mazes of the book stacks. Sometimes, I surrounded
myself with so many massive volumes of the Reader’s Guide(s) to Periodical
Literature that I was not only figuratively, but literally, lost among them.
As a naturally curious student of life and
a librarian at that, this curiosity occurs almost daily. The difference today,
of course, is that there are now many more endless opportunities to get lost.
Give me a website like the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), Wikipedia (gasp!) or
the Urban Dictionary, and I’m meters down the rabbit hole faster than you can
say Wonderland. Open up the candy boxes of the Internet like the Library of
Congress, National Geographic, or Google Scholar and off again.
The
rabbit hole also beacons me down when I visit my paid subscriptions to Netflix
and Sundance, or our library services – Hoopla! and Kanopy. I’m a documentary
junkie, and even the titles that don’t sound the least appealing to me hook me
instantly. But then I often find myself pressing the pause button because I
need to know more. Details of every character and each location. Links to clips
and articles. It always leads to the library catalog and seeking those books
that could tell me more.
Many of
those rabbit holes become library columns. And just like my habit as a college
student, I never feel that I’ve opened up enough of those candy boxes and
consumed the contents. My husband, Gerry, will attest to the fact that I often
start my columns with an idea on a Friday night and spend much of my weekend on
my laptop, freefalling among the twists and turns of my latest curiosity.
A few
weeks ago, I stumbled online upon the documentary Far From the Tree (and now
available as a DVD in our library.) It didn’t take long for me to discover that
Far From the Tree was based upon a 2012
book with the same name by Andrew Solomon subtitled Parents, Children, and the
Search for Identity. Soon, I unearthed the young adult edition with the
subtitle How Children and Their Parents Learn to Accept Another … Our
Differences Unite Us. Both of Solomon’s books qualify as sizeable tomes for
their audiences. The 2017 edition adapted for younger readers is over 400
pages. With notes, bibliography and index, the original Far From the Tree is
nearly 950 pages.
In the
books and documentary, Solomon studies children who, unlike “acorns which fall
from the oak tree,” fall “far from the tree.” Solomon explores the
circumstances that cause children to be unlike their parents and even their
siblings. These children and their families cope with deafness, dwarfism, Down
syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, and other disabilities. They may be gay or
transgender, criminals or murderers. In his lengthy book, he describes pages of
cases and individuals in each of these named circumstances.
The
documentary is simpler but still powerful.
IFC (Independent Film Company) and Director Rachel Dretzin include
intense childhood videos of children growing up and who are dealing with their
differences. Also included are
testimonies of the family members who are coping with accepting them.
Author,
researcher, journalist, and professor, Andrew Solomon has a well-deserved
reputation. The first chapter of both editions of his books describes his
dyslexia and the resulting nurturing love of his mother who helped him learn
despite it. Solomon graduated from the Horace Mann School in New York with
honors at age 18. He earned his BA from Yale and a Master’s and Ph.D. from
Jesus College in Cambridge England. He wrote The Noonday Demon, a memoir of his
own depression and a definitive study of depression that earned the 2001 National
Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012. Terry Gross of
NPR’s Fresh Air interviewed Solomon in 2015 after an update to The Noonday
Demon with an additional chapter on new treatments. Solomon has four TED Talks
to his credit. One reflects explicitly on the insight he shares in Far From the
Tree. (Thankfully, inspirational TED and TEDx talks can all be viewed online,
for free.) In Love, No Matter What (2013) Solomon shares what he learned from
children, parents, and families he talked to about learning to unconditionally
love and accept differences from what was initially dreamed.
Solomon
is a professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University Medical School in
New York City and is deeply involved with work related to women’s depression
during and after pregnancy, doctoral research he accomplished before being
awarded the degree in 2013. Most importantly, he is also actively engaged in
LGBT rights and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
individuals in their families.
Solomon’s
mother did not accept Andrew’s admission that he was, as a young adult, gay. In
his books, and on his website (andrewsolomon.com), he argues that while he now
knows that his parents always loved him, he did not recognize it as love
because he felt that they rejected him. His mother sadly died of cancer years
before her son earned much of his success or her acceptance; Andrew was in his
late 20s at the time. His father, however, is still alive and spoke at his
son’s wedding to his husband John in 2007, a poignant moment was shown on
screen in the documentary.
Far From
the Tree is about courage, compassion, and acceptance. These unique children
are not defined by their differences when their families communicate their love
for them and triumph over the odds. It is an intensely strong film.
