A Child's Take on Depression

I'm posting a wonderful paragraph from She Got Up Off the Couch and other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana. For those of you who aren't familiar with the charming Haven Kimmel (author of A Girl Named Zippy), her personal memoirs are unconventional, to say the least. The naive, quirky, and wilful Zippy--Haven's childhood self--is irresistable.

The following is a clever description of depression from a young and egocentric girl's perspective. Here, Zippy ponders her "new" driven and independent mother as Delonda shops for a dress:

"Where was ye olde Delonda, I was beginning to wonder, the one who wore Mom Mary's hand-me-downs year after year and never left the house, the person who was somehow too good for a place like Wilhelmina's [a dress shop]. I sat down under a tree, fanned myself, kicked at some dust to make a point. Never mind the lights being turned off, the lack of plumbing, the cold, humid haze in which Mom slept away the days, year after year, a silent, unmoving, unmovable mountain under blankets and afghans. What need did she have for trivialities and costume jewelry? Rising up on Sunday mornings, making do with virtually nothing (and even that nothing had to be pinned together and was so frayed it barely held), she had not seemed embarrassed or concerned. My cheerful, obese, popcorn-eating, science-fiction reading holy Mother: her eye had been on God. I missed that woman fiercely, but I barely knew why. All I knew is that as long as she was trapped I knew exactly where to find her."