40 pages • 1 hour read
Today Will Be Different
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Symbols & Motifs
The “Delphine” Baby Blocks Lanyard
The baby blocks on the young mother’s lanyard that spell out “Delphine” are a symbol that supports The Tension Between the Self and Family and the conflict keeping Eleanor and Ivy apart. They first appear when Eleanor goes to Timby’s school to pick him up and she steals them. When Timby discovers them later and she sees them again, she faints. Eleanor’s emotional distress when she sees them reflects the grief she feels over losing her relationship with Ivy and Ivy’s children, John-Tyler and Delphine. After cutting off Ivy and removing everything that reminds her of her sister, Eleanor sees the name as an unwelcome reminder. Despite this, Eleanor makes the impulsive decision to steal the lanyard, showing her desire to get Ivy and her children back into her life somehow. Her decision to do this while knowing that it’s wrong stems from her trauma over losing her relationship with Ivy and having “to learn from the goddamned newspaper that [her] sister has a daughter, so in a farkakte attempt to get back at her, [she steals] the keys of a woman with a daughter of the same name” (150). Eleanor stealing the keys represents her desire to lash out and hurt her sister in any way she can. However, this does not work, and she realizes that she must return them. By returning the keys to the school, and to the young mother, she is acknowledging that cutting Ivy out of her life and trying to lash out at her will not help her and that she must find a way to move forward and try to repair their relationship.
The Flood Girls
Eleanor’s graphic novel, The Flood Girls, is a symbol driving The Tension Between the Self and Family and a symbol of Eleanor and Ivy’s strong sisterly bond. The novel is a candid and vivid depiction of Eleanor and Ivy’s childhoods in New York City and Aspen and explores multiple events including their early childhoods, their mother’s death, their move to Aspen, their father’s alcohol addiction and neglect, Ivy’s illness, and the death of their dog, Parsley. Eleanor intends for the story to reflect the truth and the strong, enduring bond between her and Ivy. For this reason, she gifts Ivy the book for her wedding. She also seeks to publish the work in the future. Like the book, she hopes that her relationship with Ivy will succeed amid the changes in both their lives, including Eleanor’s marriage to Joe and Ivy’s marriage to Bucky. However, during Eleanor and Ivy’s argument after John-Tyler’s christening, Ivy reveals that she and Bucky were “offended” by the book’s unfiltered honesty and that Ivy feels retraumatized by it. Ivy’s criticism of the book reflects the strain in her and Eleanor’s relationship amid Bucky’s influence over her and her emotional vulnerability. Later, when Ivy and Bucky distance themselves from Eleanor, Bucky returns The Flood Girls to Eleanor, suggesting that Ivy is also rejecting her relationship with Eleanor. This causes Eleanor to cut Ivy off completely, and she stops working on the book, allowing her work with Joyce Primm and Sheridan Smith to come to a halt. After coming to terms with the past and making peace with Joe’s conversion, Eleanor finishes The Flood Girls and begins to consider publishing it again, saying that it is “jinxed no more” (206). Likewise, she decides, “I will never be done with Ivy. I don’t want to be done with Ivy. She’s my sister” (206). Like the book, Eleanor will not give up on her sister.
Joe’s Telescope
Joe’s telescope is a symbol that drives The Tension Between the Self and Family, Joe’s secret spiritual journey, and the wall of secrecy between Joe and Eleanor in the novel. The scope first appears when Eleanor and Timby return to the apartment with Spencer Martell and she notices the “bizarre” scope in Joe’s office: “On Joe’s desk. A telescope of some kind. Gray, the size of a demi-baguette, on crouching insect legs. It was aimed out the window” (83). The scope makes Eleanor realize that Joe is keeping some kind of secret from her and that she has not been attentive enough toward him. After she finds Joe and learns about his conversion to Christianity, he reveals that he uses the scope to look at the stars before describing how his observation of the stars and space through the scope and his following of the Hubble telescope has made him realize how vast the universe is and how much mystery there is in the world, which he understands now that he believes in God:
They recently aimed it at the most boring and empty patch of sky they could find. After collecting light for weeks, it found ten thousand galaxies thirteen billion lightyears away. The human mind can’t comprehend that. And it goes the other way too. The smallest particle used to be a grain of sand. Then a molecule, then an atom, then an electron, then a quark. Now it’s a string. You know what a string is? It’s a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. But I was going around like I had it all figured out? And where did it lead me? To wig out at a Seahawks game! That’s over now. I’m welcoming the mystery. I’m comforted by the mystery (191).
The scope shows Joe that he does not know everything and reflects his search for the mysteries of the universe and God’s wonders. Eventually, the tension that this revealed secret and the new differences in Joe and Eleanor’s religious beliefs create causes Eleanor to have an outburst. However, they later agree to work through this difference, and Eleanor becomes more accepting of Joe’s new faith in the divine.
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