Reread the prologue to My Sister's Keeper. Who is the speaker? Is it the same person you thought it was the first time you read it? The speaker is Kate – I thought it was Anna when I first read it. Looking back at it now is kind of disturbing!
Why is Jesse's behavior so aberrant, while until now, Anna has been so compliant? Jesse thought he wasn’t needed, so he did anything he could to be noticed. Anna was SO needed, she just went with the flow – she loved her sister, too. I agree with Aunt Annette that I felt more pity for Jesse than for Anna!
What might be a possible reason for Brian's fascination with astronomy? Something stable, something normal, constant – something he could track, observe, measure; his life was so hectic
On page 98, Kate is being admitted to the hospital in very serious condition. She mouths to Jesse, "tell Anna," but is unable to finish. What do you think she was trying to say? Maybe that she loves her; not to do anything to change the situation
Did Anna do the right thing, honoring Kate's wishes? I think so… though if I was in her situation, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have said, “Too bad, sis, I want to keep you around and will do whatever it takes to do that!”
Do you feel it was unfair of Kate to ask Anna to refuse to donate a kidney, even though this seemed to be the only way for her to avoid the lifesaving transplant? Yes – Kate should have just said she didn’t want it. It’s a lot to put on a 13 year olds plate! Not only dealing with the legal stuff, but having to deal with her sister’s death and feeling/knowing she was the cause of it!
Do you feel that it's ethical to conceive a child that meets specific genetic requirements? I’m definitely against genetic design for things like gender, hair/eye color, etc., though I wonder how I’d feel in Sara’s situation. If you know that you want another child, that you’re only planning on using cord blood to help your firstborn, and that by having the child meet those genetic specifications you may be able to save your other child… I could easily see myself doing the same thing. Even as the years passed and procedure after procedure came up, I can still see myself making similar medical decisions, though I’d hope I would be more sensitive to my non-sick kids than Sara & Brian were to theirs!
Do you sympathize with Sara? The parts of the book that are from the time when Kate was a baby/little girl and are written from Sara's perspective, I completely sympathize with her. I pray I never have to be in that situation and I understand why she did what she did. However, the parts that are written from her perspective when the kids are older (present time), I, like Aunt Annette, wanted to smack her quite a few times for acting like her other kids didn't matter.
Here are my favorite quotes:
“In my previous life, I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be – but that was before I’d been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art. It drives my sister Suzanne crazy. She’s a finance whiz who decimated the glass ceiling at the Bank of Boston, and according to her, I’m a waste of cerebral evolution. But I think half the battle is figuring out what works for you, and I am much better at being a mother than I ever would have been as a lawyer. I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere.”\
Sara’s thoughts in response to the diagnosis about Kate’s leukemia – “This is happening to us because I yelled at Jesse last week, yesterday, moments ago. This is happening because I didn’t buy Kate the M&M’s she wanted at the grocery store. This is happening because once, for a split second, I wondered what my life would have been like if I’d never had children. This is happening because I did not realize how good I have it.”
“There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop. Maybe it’s because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of life. Maybe it’s because they forgot. It’s nobody’s fault, and it’s not a big deal, but it’s a little depressing all the same. A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.”
“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.”
“Did I tell Kate I loved her before I put her to bed last night? I cannot remember. I cannot remember at all.”
“When you care more if someone else lives than you do about yourself… is that what love’s like?”
“I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up – as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn’t it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that’s holding a boy’s; wasn’t it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion – never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I would have seen this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn.”
“I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it’s not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.”
“See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded.”
After looking at who I quoted the most, I see that maybe I sympathize with Sara more than I thought! Almost all my quotes are from her. :o)
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1 comment:
Kelly you made a comment I so agree with and hadn't thought of it before. Which is Kate could have just said no I don't want the kidney transplant...SHE could have filed for emancipation. The only thing is that I don't think she had the physical strength and I think that she may not have had the inner strength to stand up to her mother...I think she wisely read the situation that Anna was able to do the "unthinkable" and say no to her parents...specifically her mother. But it really was a lot to ask of any 13 year old...even a mature one.
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