- growing up.
- Mary Astor.
- Joining the Church.
- autobiography.
- leaving a legacy.
My Story: an Autobiography
By Mary Astor
Prologue
People have often said to me, "You haven t changed a bit!" They
meant it as a compliment, but I could hear it only as an
accusation, a statement of brutal fact.
And I have thought bitterly, "You are so right!" For I knew that
if I had not changed I had not grown. To be a perennial child, an
ethereal Peter Pan playing with pirates and Indians throughout
all eternity, can be a lovely thing in the never-never land of
fantasy, but it is an unhappy thing in life, The child is born so
that he may become a man. It is his destiny to grow to learn, to
understand, to assume responsibilities. Growth can be painful, I
know; but I have found that a stunted and retarded growth can be
a pain beyond belief.
My her often used to rebuke me by saying, "You are almost nine
years old" (and then "ten," and then "eleven," and "twelve") "and
you haven t learned a thing!" Well, here I was, fifty years old,
and 1 still hadn’t learned a thing! My her s rebuke had always
seemed to imply a promise that years, the very accumulation of
years, would bring experience and understanding, So, at whatever
age I was, I wished I were older. At seventeen I longed to be
twenty-five. At twenty I wanted to be a woman of the world of
thirty. At thirty I read that the French thought a woman did not
reach a full maturity of beauty and attractiveness until she was
forty. Finally, at forty-five, I decided that the whole thing was
a pack of lies. Where was the "serenity" that the years were to
bring? Where was "the cooling of passion s blood?" I realized
that I, who leaned on so many people and things, had been leaning
even on the abstraction of time.
I was still refusing to grow up, to face the oppressive fact that
I should long since have become a responsible, mature adult. I
continued to seek people and things I could lean on, to escape
the need for making my own decisions and assuming responsibility
for my own acts. One event above all others should have brought
me to a full realization of my responsibility and dignity as an
individual, but even in that I failed. My conversion to the
Catholic Church was almost purely emotional. I felt,
instinctively, that I had finally found something substantial to
lean on, never realizing that it is the Church above all else
that demands a stern and courageous individuality. So my
conversion did not turn out to be the conventional "conversion
story" where the sinner is baptized and lives happily ever after.
I leaned, and I fell. It is true, the Church would repeatedly
pick me up and dust me off after each fall. She would dry my
tears and heal my wounds and comfort me. Then she would gently
say, "Go! Walk alone, with God." But I couldn’t walk alone. So
I...
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