Tuck: Rocks Beside the Road

I have been thinking a lot lately about one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.  Yes, it's young adult literature, but it's also incredibly good, and really quite deep.  It explores concepts of eternity, of seasons and circles, of change and growth. In one poiniant chapter Pa Tuck has a conversation with our young protagonist, Winnie, in which he explains why living forever and never ageing or changing is actually not a good thing.  His words, rocks beside the road have echoed in my mind for many years.  It's a long quote here, to give you the context,but hang with me. It's that good. 

"Know what that is, all around us, Winnie?" said Tuck, his voice low. "Life. Moving, growing, changing, never the same two minutes together. This water, you look out at it every morning, and it looks the same, but it ain't. All night long it's been moving, coming in through the stream back there to the west, slipping out through the stream down east here, always quiet, always new, moving on...

It's a wheel, Winnie. Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is...

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. But it's passing us by, us Tucks. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road. 

Now, Pa Tuck focuses on the dying part of living, but for me, it's more the changing part of living that I don't like. I don't even like changing shampoo much less anything actually important. Or big. But Tuck's words remind me time and time again that if I'm not changing, not growing, than I'm not really living. If I don't allow those around me to change and grow, than I'm not allowing them to live either. 

This wheel of change is not easy. Living's heavy work says Tuck. My friends move into town, which means they go to a different church, which means I lose my Sunday lunch buddies and friends at church. We all move on from different things at different times. Kids back home grow and change and I miss major phases and stages. Even my little people that I see all the time- they change faster than you can blink. People come and go, they move, or yes, sometimes they die. We feel the weight of the wheel as it turns and we run to catch up with it, to move on, always new. And somedays when that strain feels too much I remember the alternative, a rock beside the road, and I sigh, and pick up, and keep turning.