The Glass is Half Full #1: “Minutes Like Hours”

Flowers in the Attic is, of course, told from a first person perspective, which makes things like the prologue and the sex with one’s sibling so poignant. No narrative distance here, no siree. There are limitations to this perspective though, and they revolve around the fact that young Cathy is a Debbie Downer.

“Oh, poor us! Our father died and I had to leave all my stuff behind and be locked in an attic with a sadistic grandmother who lashes out in the name of Jesus and all of the evil that family sex represents. Boo hoo…”

Well Cathy, your readers are trapped in the attic with you too and it wouldn’t hurt to stop moping for a little bit and look at the positives of the situation. On that note, I am introducing a new occasional column, “The Glass is Half Full,” in which we will explore reasons why it might not be so bad to live in an attic, or whatever else the dear girl is prattling on about.
Today, dear readers, we’re looking at Cathy’s relationship with time. She says, “What did you do with time when you had it in superabundance? Where did you put your eyes when you had already seen everything? What direction should your thoughts take, when daydreams could lead you into so much trouble?” and proceeds to mope and dope about how boring their shitty lives are.

Time is a wonderful thing! I haven’t had any for days. So Cathy’s cup may runneth over a little bit, but I bet she has plenty of time to keep her nails clipped and never finds that they’ve gotten embarrassingly long or snags her tights on them. They also get to go to bed at 7 o’clock EVERY NIGHT and have a nap too, which has to do wonders for the dark circles such as those that plague my own Caucasian, but not blue, eyes. “Taking many baths was another way to use up excess time, and shampooing made it last longer—oh, we were the cleanest children alive.” I love to bathe! They’re clean, well rested, and throughout the day they get to nosh on “little boxes of cheese crackers.” As a youth and an adult, I love food that comes individual portions. In fact, I love anything miniature, so what a pleasure it would be to have twins that “were more like three-year-olds than children of five.” Teeny tiny creepy children! Just for them! And throughout the book, Cathy makes references to the amount of time they spend lolling under sun beams in the nude with only a filthy mattress between their tender pink flesh and the filthy attic floor. While that’s not exactly my scene, I am sure that there are plenty of nudists and others that would revel in that opportunity.

This list is by no means conclusive, but I hope that it does demonstrate that being locked in an attic for the duration of one’s youth isn’t necessarily the worst fate that can befall humanity.

In a wee attempt at optimism, Cathy says“Chris said it was a deadly crime to waste time. Time was valuable. No one ever had time enough, or lived long enough to learn enough. All about us the world was on the way to the fir, crying, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry!’ And look at us: we had time to spare, hours to fill, a million books to read, time to let our imagination take wing,” but Chris is a gay tool, so I’m not inclined to listen to him.