This American Life, if you have never head of it, is a very good radio program put out by Chicago’s public radio station, WBEZ. Each week a theme is chosen, and contributors deliver a variety of stories related to that theme. Some notable contributors include Jonathan Goldstein, Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, and David Sedaris. The emotional range of the stories is vast so it’s hard to not dislike the show. My only critique would be in that expanding to television, the broadcasts in the past couple of years tend to be re-runs. People can already access past programs through streaming radio or download them through $0.95 downloads (where is the cent symbol?) so I’m not as excited about the upcoming week’s broadcast.
A few years back there was a very good episode on Unconditional Love. Act One (27 minutes, starts at 9:24), entitled “Love is a battlefield,” dealt with the story the Solomons. They adopt Daniel, who was raised in a Romanian orphanage and up until his adoption, was deprived of emotional contact. The story concerns Daniel Solomon’s subsequent attachment disorder - which manifests itself into violence - and how the Solomons, mainly Heidi, try to deal with this.
The act “ends” with Daniel being voted by his synagogue as the most outstanding student in their confirmation class. More interestingly, however, are Heidi’s last words on Daniel’s transformation. Although she loves him - which is evident through all the emotional and physical abuse she has put up with during this period of time - her expectations are modest. Heidi believes that it is impossible to teach love. She wants Daniel just to form emotional bonds with others.
When asked if she feels loved by her son, she responds “I feel loved by Daniel…I don’t think he wants to hurt me, I don’t worry about that at all.” The modesty of this statement is interpreted as a form of strength. Making someone love you is much harder than making someone live peacefully with you. While it may seem somewhat tragic, I agree that it isn’t tragic at all.
This episode was broadcast in 2005, so I always wondered what happened to the Solomon family since then. Then, when I was at home, I was idly flipping through mom’s Reader’s Digest. So what do I find but an article on the Solomons? While true to the enthusiastic tone of all Reader’s Digest articles, it’s a good follow-up and promising future for the family.
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