Today Will Be Different

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.