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A story of a dead child and a mother who is missing him.

Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), a Scottish, wrote this book in 1902 for an older brother, David (his mother's favorite) who died in an ice-skating accident the day before he turned 14. Thus, in his mother's mind, David always stayed as a young boy who would not grow up. J. M. Barrie, a middle-child and then only 6 years old, tried to assume David's place in his mother's heart by wearing the latter's clothes and speaking and sounding like him. Barrie was 42 when Peter Pan (the character) first appeared in his other novel, The Little White Bird but the emotion of longing (the child missing his mother and the mother missing his son) can be felt by the readers as if the death only happened recently. For me, this attests to Barrie's brilliance as a novelist.

They say that losing one's child is the most painful grief that a parent can have. A parent burying his child is in contradiction to the natural cycle of life. Thus, it is a lifelong journey of grief for the parents. The very young Barrie saw this pain in his mother's heart and so he tried his best to act, speak and sound like his brother. A mother missing her child. In the story this is symbolized by the open bedroom window waiting for Wendy, John and Michael to return. When they finally do, Peter tries closing it but when he sees the tears in Mrs. Darling's eyes, he says "we don't want any silly mothers'"; and he flew away. making it a triumph of a mother's unconditional heart. A child longing for his mother's love. This is symbolized by Peter asking for Wendy to be his mother and probably Tink and probably even Mrs. Darling. This is the moral of the story: we all need mothers especially those whose windows are and will always be open for us.

A beautiful book. Mesmerizing prose. A fantasy adventure children's book on the surface. But a sad emotion-filled story of a mother and her son somewhere inside. It has the ethereal beauty of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petite Prince and the subtle meaningful cycle-of-life lesson in E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, two of favorite children's books. My only regret is that fathers like me are sidelined. We fathers have hearts too and we would like to be part of that love. Why did Barrie depict Mr. Darling as crazy feeding Nana his medicine and has to sleep in the kernel?

You see, my windows are also open.