The Miraculous Palindrome

The saddest thing I've ever witnessed is the funeral of a boy named Sam. The firstborn of his parents, he died the day after he was born. I walked into that sanctuary the day of his funeral with nothing to say, no words of encouragement or consolation to offer his parents. His father was pastor of the church, and a little part of me considered that this funeral might mark the end of his faith, and perhaps the end of that little church.

A few months passed and we went to Sam's parents' house for dinner. They showed us a sonogram photo, which we assumed to be their son, and we were sad until they told us that this was their new baby, due to be born in a matter of months.

Several months later a little girl was born and named Hannah--"my favorite palindrome," I liked to say. She was followed by two sisters and carried the weight of miracle: a symbol to her parents and their friends and family that every once in a while God turns mourning into dancing.

Some five years later, last Friday morning I came to my office to find an e-mail from my wife and a frantic message from a coworker that Hannah and her grandfather had gone missing Wednesday night in a boating accident. By this time the rescue teams had switched to searching by sonar--underwater technology that foreshadowed a death announcement. My mind went back to the funeral of Hannah's brother, and a little part of me thought that this might mark the end of her parents' faith, and perhaps mine as well.

Some four hours later, the body of Hannah's grandfather was found. Shortly after that, Hannah wandered out of the woods bordering the river, stumbling onto the search party that had been looking for her for two days. She was a revelation--an unmitigated marvel for national news outlets and local friends and neighbors to wonder over. I saw some other friends later and we looked in awe at their own five year old, trying in vain to imagine her living in the woods for two days with nothing but a swimsuit and water wings to protect her. Hannah's father, meanwhile, told reporters that Hannah took the experience in stride. "She was eating her banana looking at us. We were jumping around like maniacs."

Two miracles in one lifetime is something, and to be blissfully unaware of your own miraculousness is something even more. Hannah didn't know when she was born that she was in a small way redeeming the ache her parents had felt at the death of her brother. She didn't know that the pain still lingered, either; Sam's name is tattooed on the skin of his mother as a testament to the role he has played in the life of their family. Hannah was blissfully unaware of all of it; she began her life as anyone else would, accepting the reality she was presented with, and seeking to make her way meaningfully through it.

Hannah didn't know that her grandfather had died, either--probably saving her life, as it turns out. She wandered through the woods thinking that grandpa had gone swimming, and that she ought to get herself back to his cottage. Meanwhile her family and friends panicked, unable to imagine the miraculous because miracles are by definition unimaginable.

Hannah's miraculous birth and miraculous deliverance from death are both tethered to tragedies that no one has forgotten: even as we celebrate Hannah's life, we mourn her grandfather and remember her brother. But we remember as well that Hannah's story is unfinished, and as such we're reminded that our story is unfinished as well. And from now on when I look at Hannah I'll be reminded that amidst all the tragedy that marks every story there's a God working quietly, sometimes unimaginably, to redeem our aches and to turn our mourning into dancing.

Speaking of Spider-Man

I recently regained the electronic rights to my book Comic Book Character, so now I can put portions of it online here. I thought, with the third film in the Spider-Man franchise coming this week to a theater near you, it might be fun to take a look at what about Peter Parker captured my imagination at the time. The following is excerpted from pages 23-24 of the book, under the heading "The Fantasy of Strength":

What is it about superheroes that makes them endure the tedium of normal life? And why do we, as readers, allow it? If we had the powers of our heroes, would we stand for the petty meanness of the average people who bully us? If we knew our friends had such powers, would we allow them to do nothing for us or for themselves?

There’s an unspoken rule among superheroes that powers are to be used only in critical situations. We’re not often told why, but the origin of one superhero gives us a look at what could happen without such self-restraint.

Spider-Man wasn’t always Spider-Man. For most of his childhood he was mild-mannered Peter Parker, an orphaned genius being raised by his elderly aunt and uncle. He was a bookish, withdrawn kid, regularly used and abused by his classmates. . . .

Then one day on a field trip to a laboratory, Peter was bitten by a spider exposed to radiation. Over time Peter discovered that he had appropriated the physical characteristics of a spider—the ability to stick to walls and ceilings; greatly enhanced strength, speed and agility; and (we’re told much later in the 2002 film) the capacity to spin his own webbing. He had always been smarter than anyone in his class; now he was stronger, faster, more talented and quickly more confident as well.

So Peter did what you might expect the butt of everyone’s jokes to do: he started showing off. He picked fights with schoolmates and got quick revenge on the people who had abused him for so long, and he started making lots of money by exploiting his newfound talents as an unbeatable mystery wrestler. He alienated everyone he encountered—his employer, his classmates, eventually even the press—with his rash, defiant attitude. And when he could have stopped a burglary without even exerting himself, he didn’t bother. All the average, immature high-school students got their comeuppance from Peter, but no bad guys met justice through Spider-Man.

Peter learned a painful lesson though. His uncle, who had raised him since his parents’ death, lost his life at the hands of the very burglar Peter had let escape. Peter quickly realized that by his inaction he was complicit in his uncle’s death. And by the end of his first adventure, as he meditated on his uncle’s advice—"With great power comes great responsibility"— he grew up a bit and discovered the proper channel for his abilities.

Peter Parker added an adolescent humanness to superheroes that until his debut in the comic Amazing Fantasy had played a minor role, and he resonated with his readers. We learned that to fantasize about having special powers was all well and good, but there was a corresponding ethic to having such powers, and our fantasies would not play out as we might like if we intended to remain the hero of our own stories. We can hope that someday we will be stronger than we are, better equipped to handle the hardships we inevitably face, but we must also hope that we will use that strength with wisdom and humility.

For Peter, that humility meant returning day after day to school and eventually to work, enduring humiliation as well as he could, and seeking the appropriate balance of power and responsibility that his uncle had pointed him toward. He used his powers only against those whose passions could not be controlled by the ordinary safeguards of law, common decency and moral impulse. He alternately used and hid his powers so that he and the people around him could live as normal and happy a life as possible. Such was his gift, and such was the greatest use of his strength.

Of course, this passage is looking at the origin of Spider-Man, and he's grown up quite a bit since then. The adult Peter Parker we'll meet in 3 faces problems progressively more complex and more grave. This third movie should once again do what the first two have already done: demanded more aesthetically, psychologically, relationally and even morally from the genre. Let me know what you think of the previews you've seen; as for me and my house, we will buy I-Max tickets in advance.