"While Elizabeth hoped for Fridays, I looked forward to Mondays-the moment when I could walk away from it all, leave the stuffy air of the house behind me as if that life belonged to someone else. I buried myself in school projects earning extra credit and red plus marks across the top of every page" (Cook 183). Tilden is wanting to leave the scene of her mother's reaction to the chemotherapy. She doesn’t want this to be her life she is tired of seeing her mother lose her hair, become weak and dependent on others. Tilden was used to her mom taking care of her and being strong willed and independent. Tilden couldn't bare the thought of her mother becoming weak and being hurt. She did school work instead of thinking about her mother. She used earning extra credit as a way of except from the pain at home, when she could go to school. Tilden wanted to pretend that the person who had breast cancer was not her mother, Tilden wanted and escape and the only way she knew how to escape was to go to school and excel in school.
When it was time for her mother's last chemotherapy treatment in December, the family had put their lives on hold. There was no wreath, no lights and Frances decided that there would be no gifts on Christmas. Instead of giving, the family would concentrate on the real meaning of Christmas, not the present part. This was totally unlike Tilden's mother, to Elizabeth it was ruining Christmas. There was no order to the family anymore and the girls were left to deal with it.
When Christmas came around, the whole neighborhood made a huge present for Tilden's mother and her accomplishment at finishing her chemotherapy. In the end, Nick proposed to Tilden's mother and asked the girls if he could adopt them. Tilden, was still not close to Nick and could not believe that he was permanent. When her mother asked Tilden if it was okay. Tilden did not respond cheerfully. She instead said that what ever her mother wanted would be fine. Now Tilden was forced to live with a father that she was not close to at all. Tilden refused to give her gift to her mother and instead hid it in her closet. She felt that it was not something her mother would want, and Tilden felt embarrassed at the thought of giving it to her.
After the wedding, a small bump on her mother's neck appeared. Cancer had come back to haunt the family. "Within a week, Mama had to be hospitalized overnight for an infection in her lungs. This forced a truce between me and Elizabeth. We used our collective energy to demand more information...by the fourth of July, Mama had to check back into the hospital to have some fluid drained from her lungs" (Cook 246). When Tilden's mother came home from the hospital, she was weak and frail. Instead of her mother taking care of her, she was taking care of her mother. Tilden is forced to grow up so fast now. Living in a home that is so new to her, a new town, with a man that she barely knows. Tilden is so alone and she only has her sister to help her through this. Shortly after her mother's arrival, Tilden finds that her mother is dying. She lay in her bed still "I spent that entire day running between my bedroom and Mama's, seeking solitude, then company. Alone in my room, I dug through boxes of old photographs, pinning pictures of Mama edge-to-edge on my corkboard. Sitting there amongst images of her, healthy and vibrant, it was easy to forget what was happening, to pretend it away. She was so beautiful in every picture-a sly, knowing smile, her hair shining around her face-I was quickly taken back to before she was sick. Then, I would get a pang of fear, a little worry growing in my gut, a question I wanted to ask, some story I needed to hear and run dry-mouthed down to her room, only to find her, a shadow of herself, dull and groggy" (Cook 271). Tilden realizes that the past was all inside her mother. No one knows what she was like when she was little or what her father was like or the games they played when she was little and as her mother slowly drifts away so does the past. This is such and umbarrable thought to Tilden, not wanting to lose her mother or the past.
Before Frances dies, she slips into a coma, Tilden says that the definition of a coma in the dictionary did not prepare her for the fact that Mama would not regain consciousness. "I ran to get Elizabeth, pulling her out from her covers and dragging her back without a word. I had stopped watching for only that moment. I had missed saying good-bye" (281). Tilden is slowly realizing that nothing can prepare her for the future, not a book or a mother. She is learning that she must become stronger and more independent than she has ever been before, although she has the love of Nick and her uncle, she still does not have a mother. Her mother has always been there for her and then once she had breast cancer, Tilden had no one to turn to. "Nothing prepared me for this. No book. No talk. We were three always. Even when we were four. Now the two of us now around in her space without a center. Still well are held together by gravity. There is no way to know for sure what Mama might have said or done. We have learned to share this uncertain space" (302). Together Elizabeth and Tilden share the love they had for their mother the memories and the past. They share their sorrow and their pain and their strength to keep the past alive. Together they must learn how to over come the pain that their mother's death has caused and together they will learn to grow.
While reading What Girls Learn by Karin Cook, I learned myself how fortunate and lucky I am to have a loving family and mother. I had no idea what it would be like to lose a mother, and I know this book has only given me an insight to what it would be like. This novel is a realistic look into a teenage girls learning to cope with her changing body and a changing world. The pain of loosing anyone near you must be hard, and What Girls Learn shows how one can over come the pain of a loss. This novel, shows strength, of someone fighting for a life, but also of someone fighting for survival. In reality, everyday is a fight for survival, and only sometimes do you win. What Girls Learn has displayed how life is not always fair and how life is cruel. However, when someone overcomes something cruel and unfair, that is when they survive, and that is when they become the hero.