Lily's Eyes

The Secret Garden is one of my favorite books. I can't really explain why I was attracted, from page one, to Mary Lennox, irritable and knowitallish and (as the song goes) really, really quite contrary. I saw myself in her I suppose. When I was little there used to be a Japanese cartoon on ABS-CBN--it was dubbed into Filipino and had the title of Maria at ang Lihim na Hardin--and that was where I met her first; but there isn't really any kind of substitute for reading Mary Lennox on the page, or seeing Kate Maberley (see photo) play her in the most faithful (at least in spirit) adaptation of The Secret Garden ever made.


Look at her! I love her here, irritable in hot weather and dressed in more skirts than she can play around in.

This is Mary with Dickon and Colin. I loved the unquestioning loyalty of the other two--how they took her, temperament and all, and loved her. I loved how Dickon was with the two of them, easily the poorest and most uneducated, but the wisest, simply because he was the most loved.


This is Mary and Colin. I suppose at the time it was legal to marry your first cousin; I loved the two of them together so much that I didn't particularly care as a child.

When I first read the book, I was charmed by the characters--how uniquely flawed they all were, how miserable, how much drawn into themselves, and how Mary's being catapulted into a life in Misselthwaite manor drew them out--and the tiny details about flowers and gardening, about taking care of things, about building things from scratch and caring for them and loving them. When I grew older and watched the movie (one of my family's favorites; we've memorized the script) and read the book over and over again, I realized that Mary, Colin and Archibald Craven are all like the garden... neglected, and in need of love and sunlight.

There is no real point to this blog. Tonight, the night before my pulmo OSCE, I just kept listening to this song, Lily's Eyes, which is the only song I know from the musical version of the Secret Garden:



The Snape/Lily parallels notwithstanding (eww), I really love this song. It gets better when you think that so much misery is made better when Mary comes along, an unknowing knight errant, sent by God to save the inhabitants of Misselthwaite from dwindling into despair.

The thing is, we can all dwindle into despair if we want--we can all let our spirits become neglected gardens. The movie is so atmospheric, so much rural England (it sounds like Scotland but the original inspiration is English) in the winter, so much snow and dark hallways and walled-in gardens. It fills you with a sort of claustrophobia, and fear, and a sense of despair. What I'm trying to say, in my own feeble distracted-medical-student way, is that everyone has that kind of garden inside us--in hibernation, as though it were winter, snowed under with memories and grudges, and attachment. Archibald Craven had grown too much attached to his wife that he couldn't see that his son and his niece were right in front of him, starving for affection and approval; like a garden in dire need of pruning, Misselthwaite was left to be strangled (as by overgrown branches) by the memory of Lily, Archibald's wife. (In the musical it takes a more sinister turn--Colin's doctor and Archibald's brother was in love with her, too.). We can let ourselves become like that. It's easy. You can exist without living--letting one day after another go by, going through the motions, growing comfortable, never giving yourself entirely.

Or you can choose to embark on the new adventure of falling in love. With life; with your family; with the God who demands but who gives back a hundredfold. And the beauty of a blossoming soul is a thousand times more beautiful than any garden that could grow under Dickon's expert hands.