answered:
- One day in
the future, a girl will ask of her maybe-father definitely-teacher
(one is likely; the other is a certainty; she calls him Master
because she wants no other family than that she has chosen): where
did Skywalker come from. And
the Master will say from my father he was a great man and
a terrible one and – and the
girl will shake her head, chew her lip, say, did he choose
it and the Master will frown (a
pucker between his brows; a corrugation of his lined, weatherbeaten
face) and say, no his mother chose it
and the girl will say who was she and
the man will say a slave on Tattooine; my uncle’s
brother’s second wife and no
more. He knows no more. Don’t blame him.
- Do not blame the teacher-before either. You knew him as an old man, old and strong and lonely, but once he was a boy with a snake-tail of a braid and an empty space under his heart where love once rested. He watches his Master die and he tries to shoulder a burden that is absurd in its immensity. Train the boy who will save everything. Imagine that. Imagine. And, yes, he says this boy must come with us but remember: the Force is endless hunger, an animal. It isn’t willfully cruel – no more than the ocean. But if you do not learn to swim, you die. If a boy strong with the Force is not trained, he will surely perish.
- (or worse. There are horror stories.)
- Blame, perhaps, the council, so anchored in their ways that they do not permit the child to see his mother. Blame, perhaps, the Jedi so ancient and so wise who take their Chosen One and tell him that he can save the universe and all he loves, blame them who take a nine year old from his mother and give him weapons to hold instead of hands. Fight fight fight but only when you are told to. Kill without mercy when we say otherwise show limitless mercy. Do as you are bidden always and forever. Save everything. Master your feelings. Have no feelings.
- From my point of view the Jedi are evil! – what are those but the words of a lost, stupid boy, trusting only in the fierceness of his own heart and the iron surety of his convictions.
- Blame the boy. Maybe. After all: this was his choice. He did not have to listen to older and wiser heads that said go to war and afterwards tend to your mother. He did not have to cut down children. He did not have to.
- Children. Definition: the youngsters of any race. Before the younglings in the temple there were the Sand People, the tiny ones, J'Wratha and Taraka and those are only two, sliced apart in front of their mother. He was damned before the temple. Do you understand?
- If you do not: we return to Shmi. And here she is: