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Published on 11/30/1998 All articles from this issue

Marshmallow and rock

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By Kerri Havnen Gordon

The Living Experiment

Whether or not I care to admit it, I am a combination of strength and softness, of resilience and vulnerability, of solidity and mush.

I was dimly aware of this in high school, but I didn't like it, even though I sensed that my classmates were also struggling and testing different faces to show the world. As for me after my parents died, what worked the best was to be a rock on the outside, covering up at all costs the marshmallow on the inside. Vulnerability and mush were dutifully concealed by the protective rock, which was an easier face to carry around than malleable marshmallow. Although I wasn't entirely comfortable with either extreme trait, I was more at ease projecting the smiling and brave face.

When I was in my twenties, I fooled myself into thinking that the marshmallow part of me had been a sign of high school insecurity and weakness. Being a mature, ambitious young woman, I figured I had emerged and conquered and that my true rock-like composition had prevailed, leaving vulnerability in its wake.

Convinced that my sufferings - from the forgettably minor to the cataclysmic - were thankfully behind me, I felt all-powerful, invincible. I was sure I was a rock inside and out. I had overcome tragic circumstances. I was beyond. Nothing could shake me. I dared the world, "Just try to push me over. You can't, because I am a rock."

And then I grew up. Living for almost 40 years is enough to bring out the marshmallow in anyone.

Now I appreciate that on most days I am a rock on the outside and a marshmallow on the inside, a well-adjusted and highly-polished version of the conflicted combo I was in high school. This is a good thing. The rock propels me to put myself out there in the big, big world. It motivates me to push beyond my comfort zone in countless wonderful, life-altering ways.

Underneath the determined rock, I am a softie to the core, prone to the effects of a small boy's hug, given to sentimental ramblings, not at all beyond occasional lapses of both confidence and feelings of well being.

I would never trade one for the other; I need them both - for balance - to daily, monthly, yearly plod through my own living experiment. But there are times, like the holidays, when the marshmallow predominates, when I wistfully remember the house I grew up in and the family I grew up with, when I cling to my Midwestern roots. One Christmas Eve my sister blurted out, "I miss Wisconsin, dead people, and snow." Both my sister's and my gooey marshmallows emerge in some such bittersweet form this time of year. And instead of avoiding our feelings, as we were prone to do in high school, we embrace and honor them, knowing that the rock will keep us sane and centered.

The entire month of December is typically a mushy time for me. As much as possible, I give myself over to my inner marshmallow.

I avoid succumbing to holiday shopping madness, instead relishing lazy family evenings with lit fireplaces, warm memories, old rituals, and storytelling over mugs of steaming cocoa. December, I have decided, is a time for slippers, not shoes.

January will come soon enough. With it will come New Year's resolutions and work projects and busy schedules and remembering to send the kids to basketball practice. In January I will again need rock-hard focus and determination. But not yet.

Kerri Havnen Gordon writes The Living Experiment monthly for the Town Crier.