It's Coming

It was the winter of 1999 when my obsession began. I was visiting my daughter in Paris who was spending her jr year abroad in a small cubicle on the 6th floor of a building on the Rue Guenegue within walking distance of the Mona Lisa. It used to be the maid’s quarters and every morning we placed our feet on her 15th C brown tile floor. Christmas was approaching and we were making our preparations for this strange holiday to be spent with each other in a strange land while her father/my husband and her brother/my son managed their own festivities with friends in Atlanta. We shopped at the florist for decorations, noting the woman in line ahead of us buying orange and green Christmas tree balls, just one more example of the orange and green French color scheme that I saw on and in everything from film to emergency vehicles; one more entry in the orange and green French photo essay that I mourn that I did not create. We chose to decorate with “oo,” which should not be confused with “oh.” Protected by our parapluie –my first French word – we shopped the open street market for fresh brown bread; we bought the ingredients for fresh lasagna and salad and dark chocolate, reading those labels carefully for at least 67% dark, in the small local grocery where customers often carried in their little dogs; and then we went to the library to choose our Christmas reading. While Amity browsed the French section, I perused the English. What books would the French deem worthy to include in this small collection? And there it was, The Children of Men, by P. D. James. I had been hearing about this P.D. James for sometime now and had been wanting to read her, not only because her married name was my maiden name, and not only because she was a woman, but because I heard that she was good. Christmas day came and we cooked, we ate, and we read. The Children of Men turned out to be a dystopia, a genre that I am fond of, some of my favorite books being Farenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale and that one by Ayn Rand, not because they speak of some unspeakable vision of the future, but because they speak of today. But the Children of Men, a tale of a time when women can no longer conceive, had something different about it. One woman did conceive and the baby would come and bring hope to a dying civilization. There was something about the Christmas story in this portrait of struggle for earthly power in a country accustomed to euthanizing its old cast-offs and fearful of its agressive young. Did it end with hope or did it not? The novel clung to me as we walked along the swollen Seine that evening. Back in Atlanta, I spied the autobiography of P.D. James at Barnes and Noble. I checked the index for all references to Children of Men. P.D. James usually writes detective novels, many of which have been made into TV shows for BBC featuring Detective Dagliesh. But Children of Men is the book that people ask her about the most. She said it was a Christian allegory. I wondered if it had been made into a movie. My bookclub read Children of Men. I bought copies for friends and relatives for presents. I gave copies to the two aspiring writers/filmmakers that I know. I fantasized about writing the script for a play, myself. I even had casting ideas. My son called to tell me the news about a month ago. It’s coming this fall. It’s a movie with Clive Owens and Julianne Moore – great casting. I’ve seen the trailer on the web and I think they’ve kind of messed it up. But you read the book and you decide.