Absent Parents and Lonely Children

    

     There comes a certain point in our lives in which we no longer want to depend on our parents anymore. This point in our lives is called coming of age. Before this point though, we depend on parents more than anything else. So what would happen if our parents were noot really there in that time of our lives? The book The History of Love by Nicole Krauss shows a perfect example of that situation. Alma and Bird are brother and sister, Bird being the younger sibling. Thier father is dead, and thier mother is constantly grieving to the point that she is not able to support the two of them. Both Alma and Bird dealt with growing up without the support of of parents very differently.
     Alma dealt with it by somehow always beliving that things could and would go back to normal, whatever normal was like before her fater died. She constantly tries to get her mother to fall in love with someone, because she belives that would pull her mother out of her grieving. But even as she acts this way, she in some way knows that normal will never come. After Alma's mother constantly turns down a man named Dr. Lavender, Alma herself calls him. "Dr. Lavender?' I said.  And then I told him that I thought my mother actually liked him and even though a very normal person would probably be very happy to talk to him and even go out again, I'd known my mother for eleven and a half years and she'd never done anything normal," (page 48).
     Bird dealt with it very differently. He turned to religion. He actually more then turned to religion, he pretty much became obsessed. He wrote God's name on every page of Alma's favorite book. He sold lemonade so he could save enoiugh money to go to Israel. He talks about religion to the point that he no longer has any friends. And he is only eight years old. When we are that age, we basically worship our parents. He didn't have anyone left to look up to, so he ended up looking up to God. But as Bird goes further into his coming of age experience, I beleive that he will pull farther and farther away from his belief in God, just as one usually pulls away from their parents. "But this time I couldn't ask God for help," Bird says, "because I had to figure it out by myself."
     In conclusion, Alma and Bird dealt with having absent parents very differently. Alma was older, and less attached, so she belived that she herself could take control of the situation. Bird was alone at a time in which nobody should ever be alone. He had to figure out a way to not be alone so he could just simply survive. Later on, Bird might have to face coming of age alone. And that will affect him for the rest of his life.