I was recently re-reading a favorite book of mine titled Remember by Karen Kingsbury and came to an interesting realization.
Many people know that now days, a
supportive family and freedom from past choices in order to live a happy life.
The issue becomes that families are not always supportive of each other and
past decisions can end up more like a jail cell than freedom. In the novel Remember by Karen Kingsbury, Ashley
Baxter has the supportive family that she needs but not the freedom from her
past. The middle child of five, Ashley is supported by her family and she
supports them. Her issue is that she had a traumatic experience when she
visited Paris which resulted in her son Cole. Ashley Baxter is a family person
who enjoys caring for her family and painting, but she cannot move beyond her
past even though she wants too.
Ashley loves doing thing for her family;
from playing with her son and hanging out with her friend Landon to family
dinners every week. She does what she can to help her parents get what they
need, especially when her mom is diagnosed with cancer. If Ashley isn’t with
her parents, she is playing with her son, working with Alzheimer patients, or
talking with her high school sweetheart, Landon Blake. When Ashley is with her son,
although she partly views him as an accident, Ashley loves watching Cole play
and painting some of the things that he does. Landon makes Ashley feel things
that she never expected to feel, especially after her trip to Paris. If it
wasn’t for her coming back from Paris pregnant, Ashley knows that she would
most likely be willing to have a relationship with Landon. Everything that
Ashley enjoys, she does her best to capture the moment in her paintings.
The paintings that Ashley creates are her
way of showing her passions. She paints everything that she can capture. As a
way of venting, Ashley uses her artistic abilities to find meaning in life and
express her love for family and art. The things that Ashley painted after she
came back from Paris forced Ashley to realize that there was more to life than
her past. Those things being her son and Landon, her family and the Alzheimer
patients that Ashley spends all her time with. Ashley has so much going for her
but she cannot see it because she is constantly thinking about her past.
When Ashley finished high school, she went
to Paris to try to become a well-known painter. While she was there, Ashley
fell in love with a famous French painter. As their relationship progressed,
Ashley learned that, not only had he gotten her pregnant, he was married and
would for the same kind of relationship with anyone that was willing to. That
experience left Ashley unwilling to form a relationship and resenting her son.
It was not until Landon and Ashley realize that they desperately love each
other that Ashley sees the importance of her son’s life and that not all men
are the same.
A family gal and, even though she had been
trapped in her past, willing to move beyond, Ashley Baxter is a character who
shows the importance of family and working through the past to find freedom.
Throughout Remember Ashley changes
but she also follows her heart. She takes life lessons for what they are and
uses them to make the best she can of her life.
