Who said in the course of a lifetime what does it matter

She wants nice, clean answers, and she searches for these answers in those around her. She thinks maybe she'll feel better if she just blames someone else for her hurt. However, things are not always so cut and dry for Sal. One of the biggest lessons she learns is to walk in someone else's shoes, er, moccasins. By the end of the novel, Sal has learned to walk in the moccasins of her greatest enemy — Mrs.

At first Sal believes that Mrs. Cadaver is an evil, manipulative woman who has latched on to her grieving father. She buys into Phoebe's suspicions that Mrs. Cadaver is an axe-murderer who killed her own husband and buried him in her backyard.

But, oh, how wrong Sal and Phoebe are! After Mr. Birkway tells Sal and Phoebe the true story of how Mrs. Cadaver's husband died, Sal suddenly changes. A lot. She empathizes with Mrs. Cadaver and is able to imagine what it must have been like for her to watch her husband die from a car accident.

I could feel her heart thumping like mad as she realized it was her own husband and her own mother lying there. I imagined Mrs. Cadaver touching her husband's face. It was as if I was walking in her moccasins, that's how much my own heart was pumping and my own hands were sweating.

By walking in Mrs. Cadaver's moccasins, Sal actually has a physical reaction. She can feel what Mrs. Cadaver must have felt, emotionally and physically. She uses her great ability to channel her senses in order to understand the person she had previously hated the most. Sal is very good at learning things about herself and others. She may be stubborn, but she confronts those fears that make her so stubborn. In this way, we begin to see that walking in someone else's moccasins has a lot to do with being able to empathize with them feel what they are feeling.

And it seems like being able to empathize with someone requires a very vivid imagination, which is good because Sal has one of the most vivid imaginations of all. After Sal is able to walk in Mrs. Cadaver's moccasins, she can no longer judge her or blame her.

She understands her. After learning the real story of Mrs. Cadaver's husband, Sal continues to walk in Mrs. Cadaver's moccasins. Sal goes to her after months of ignoring her and asks her how she met her father. Sal has always been deeply afraid that Mrs.

Cadaver has been trying to replace her mother. She faces this big, huge fear, knowing that what she learns might be very difficult to process. By facing her fear, she discovers that Mrs. Cadaver was actually the last person to see and speak to her missing mother.

Her conversation with Mrs. Cadaver tells her even more about her own mom. Perhaps the most important moccasins in Sal's life are those of her mother. Sal literally retraces her mother's footsteps as she goes on a road trip from Euclid to Idaho. In doing so, she finds her way to the site of her mother's death and is able to imagine where her mother spent her final days.

When Sal comes to terms with the fact that her mom and her grandma are never coming back, Sal suddenly realizes why her grandparents take her on road trip to Idaho. A person had to go out and do things and see things, and I wondered, for the first time, if this had something to do with Gram and Gramps taking me on this trip. Sal learns that walking in someone else's moccasins helps you see things for yourself. Now she knows her mom won't be coming back, but on the trip she also gets a better idea of why her mother left in the first place, which is something she's been painfully struggling with for quite a while.

Sal's journey in both Mrs. Cadaver's and her mom's moccasins leads her to be less afraid and more open to the world around her and all the kooky people in it. We feel certain that many more journeys await Sal and that she'll approach them with great enthusiasm and gusto.

First of all, it might be helpful here to define what "agenda" means. Merriam-Webster says this word means:. So an agenda can be both a to-do list and an ulterior motive. Now, does everyone really have his own agenda? We think what this message is trying to say is that everyone is just trying to get by and do the best that they can do. Everyone's looking out for themselves in their own way, which can sometimes make it hard to understand just what the heck a person's doing.

How does this particular message relate to Sal? Well, by recognizing that her mother was just trying to get by and figure things out in her own life, Sal realizes that she had nothing to do with her mom's leaving.

Her mom needed to do what her mom needed to do. Still, that's a hard pill to swallow, because mothers are super important. No matter how fleeting or lasting our relationships are with them, they teach us how to exist in the world.

Sal struggles most with the fact that in losing her mother, she's lost her source of understanding how to be and how to live in the world. Suddenly, she's out on her own:. When my mother had been there, I was like a mirror.

If she was happy, I was happy. If she was sad, I was sad. For the first few days after she left, I felt numb, non-feeling. I didn't know how to feel. I would find myself looking around for her, to see what I might want to feel. Losing your mother is scary, and it takes Sal a while to learn to live without her.

But when she does, she feels kind of triumphant and hopeful. For example, when she observes a baby calf being born one day after her mother has left, Sal feels happy and excited all on her own. She doesn't need to be her mother's mirror:. Ian 34 books view quotes. Feb 10, AM. Chey 92 books view quotes. Jan 11, PM. Dec 24, PM. Seasalt books view quotes. Dec 15, PM. Jennifer 2, books view quotes. Oct 24, PM. Crystal 1, books view quotes.

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Debbiebajomo 53 books view quotes. As I walked home, I thought about the message. In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter? I said it over and over. I wondered about the mysterious messenger, and I thought about all the things in the course of a lifetime that would not matter. I did not think cheerleading tryouts would matter, but I was not so sure about yelling at your mother.

I was certain, however, that if your mother left, it would be something that mattered in the whole long course of your lifetime.