Ways to Make Sunshine

The final chapters feature resolutions for some of Ryan’s challenges and pose new challenges for her to face with a positive outlook. Ryan exercises her talent as an imaginative storyteller and ability to conjure a positive outlook when she partially solves the mystery of the tin canister. Due to her persistence in trying to figure out the mystery, she inspires Laura to bring her a photograph of her mother and her mother’s childhood friend, Gloria Mae, wearing the silver hairpins Ryan found in the canister. Ryan imagines a scene in which “Mary Beth’s hair kept falling in her face and getting in the way–like hair does sometimes–and she asked her friend Gloria if she could borrow a hairpin” (160). She imagines the two friends having a wonderful night at the neighborhood celebration together. There is a subtle and unspoken racial component to the revelation of the photograph. In the photo, taken in 1945, Mary Beth and Gloria Mae stand together at the Junior Rose Festival court celebration, holding hands. Ryan notes that Mary Beth is white and Gloria Mae is Black.

In the pre-Civil Rights era, this scene of different races coming together in friendship and harmony would have perhaps been less common, and therefore Ryan’s imaginative story about the fun time that the girls had together, unbound by segregation or other racist policies and attitudes, alludes to Ryan’s vision for a just world in which everyone gets along and has what they need.

One of Ryan’s biggest accomplishments in these chapters is when she overcomes her fear of public speaking and volunteers to be the MC of the talent show. Nervous before she steps out onstage, she tells herself: “I can do this, I just have to try” (164), which not only shows growth in her confidence but also her understanding that success does not equal perfection. Ryan helps Hannah overcome her pre-show anxiety as well, telling her: “You told me nerves are good, right? That we can use that energy to push us to do our best–all we can do is our best” (165). Her desire to help the talent show go on outweighs her fear of public speaking, and in this way, Ryan shows that her selflessness and willingness to help others really can be a talent displayed on a stage.

Despite her accomplishment, Ryan’s biggest challenge in really understanding how much she is “growing into my name” (167) comes in the concluding chapter when she learns she will be getting a new baby sister. Mirroring the scene earlier in the text when she learns they are moving, Ryan responds with dismay and a refusal to eat the cake and ice cream her parents brought to celebrate the occasion. But this time, instead of letting her ice cream turn into “a pool of milk” (16), Ryan considers her unborn sister’s feelings and shows how much she has grown. She thinks “I don’t want her to know I refused to eat the cake and ice cream, that I complained about all the things that wouldn’t be the same. I think to myself how awful that would feel to know her big sister was so upset” (172). Although she still feels the weight of this news and its implications for her life, Ryan puts her sister’s feelings ahead of her own and uses that to shift her perspective. She eats the cake at the table with her mother, thinking “I’m glad I didn’t waste it” (173).

The text ends on a note of optimism, which has come to define Ryan’s outlook on life: “I think maybe things will get better and better from here” (175). Ryan is not content to wallow in anxiety over change, and instead looks to find the positives in new situations that present themselves to her, regardless of their challenges. Ryan shows in these chapters that there are many ways to make sunshine for oneself, and perhaps more importantly, for others.