I have a photographic negative showing my grandmother, Fay Fletcher Jackson (before she married Gordon Keays Smith), standing on a Mount Hood glacier that mostly isn’t there anymore. This would be in the early years of the 20th century. She carries a small backpack because she is a very small person and wears heavy boots, thick leggings (no skirt), and a broad grin. She set no records, made no history, but she climbed.
That thing we do… remembering
The first time he hit her was three weeks after their wedding. She didn’t leave him, she said, because she could not face telling her mother she was right that he was a mistake. Her husband didn’t like her working, so she worked only when he was at sea and had to quit whenever he was home. He made her return the sofa she bought with money she earned. Every once in a while, he beat her up. It was always her fault. I don’t know if their daughter was aware of those occasional beatings, but she left the country for college and never went back.
Another woman I knew did finally leave her husband, packed a quick bag and drove her children away across two states to her brother’s home. There had been beatings, threats. He didn’t like her working. It was always her fault. She called a crisis line when she came home to find all her work clothing cut into pieces on their bed. The crisis worker told her that was a rehearsal, that she would be what her husband cut next, that she should go someplace he could not find her. She discovered during her divorce that he had put his first wife in the hospital. She hadn’t even known he’d been married before.
A woman I did not know was married to a local doctor. Maybe he beat her, maybe he was unfaithful, maybe he was cruel in some other way. I don’t know. I trust she had her reasons for what she did. She left him, moved away, divorced, and began a new life. She came home from work on a day that was not one of his days to see his children, to find he’d murdered both of her daughters and killed himself. His reasoning was to punish her and leave her with nothing.
For years I tried to understand how anyone could come back from that?
People make mistakes. Maybe you could share a few stories of people who suffered from their mistakes. Maybe you have a story of your own. My marriage has been my salvation, but I have made plenty of mistakes.
Everyone falls. Not everyone gets back up and carries on.
I wrote a novel about a woman who makes a bad marriage, but eventually leaves, suffers unbearably, and then must find a way to walk on through life without her daughter. I’m not certain I could do what my fictional character does, I am not certain I could recover. I wrote the novel to figure out how to do it.
My book, variously titled Everybody’s Mother Dies, The Promised Hour, and Painting Over, is not structured like a conventional novel. The bad stuff happens early and through the middle, but that’s not what the story is about. Everyone’s mother dies, everyone experiences loss, everyone makes mistakes. Mine is a novel about what comes after tragedy. It is the story of a woman taking a day at a time, placing one foot in front of another. Maybe that is where we are all going to be in the next year: figuring out how to get on with our lives.
Have I mentioned recently how much I still miss my mom and dad?
•
•
•
Koi. Just because they are big fish and pretty.
My husband and I were talking about apologies last evening. We had been discussing boorish behavior revealed by the MeToo movement as contrasted by the genuinely criminal behavior of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.
I can forgive the guy who makes a stupid joke or a failed pass. But what about the cases of men who double down on a stupid move by harassing and threatening the careers of women? How bad before borderline become brutality? How bad does it have to be before action pass into unforgivable?
At what point does a mistake become abuse? Is the line so very hard to see? I don’t think it’s all that difficult to define where a mistake becomes a failure to offer basic respect. You make a modest error, and instead of threatening to damage a woman’s career, you apologize. You don’t wait years, you don’t pretend it didn’t happen, you don’t blame her for anything, and you don’t apologize to one woman while ignoring the other two or six or sixteen you abused. You recognize you have been a jerk and say, Sorry! right off. Then you do not do it again.
If, let’s say, you accuse someone of having a bad temper while standing over them and yelling, and while the person you are yelling at is worried because her husband has gone to the doctor and been taken to the ER; or you have yelled at a teacher and called her “vindictive” because she asked your son to rewrite an essay that failed to follow directions, after several papers where the same student didn’t follow directions. It is not enough to stop. “Sorry” is the missing word.
Sucking up to someone later to avoid admitting you have been a jerk is not the same as apologizing. “Being nice” or claiming: “I didn’t intend for your feelings to be hurt” is not the same as apologizing.
An apology begins with “I’m sorry” and moves on from there.
Some people seem to have trouble with those words. Some women have trouble saying they are sorry, too, but mostly it seems to be men. Last night, I said I was glad both our sons and my husband were able to do that.
“Well,” my husband offered mildly, “it’s different for a man to apologize.”
I thought: male ego? Cultural demands for masculine behavior? “Is it?” I said.
“No,” Gary said.
I laughed.
Gary said, “If you’re an asshole you’re an asshole and you should apologize.”
Well, you see why I married him 44 years ago, right? Our sons take after their dad. I am proud that they consider the consequences of their actions. They care about justice. They care about what is right. They aren’t perfect people. Who is?
Gary ordered six CDs today. “I got carried away.” I don’t mind. He loves music the way I love yarn. He’s entitled. (And he’s not sorry.)
On the other hand, we all make mistakes sometimes. We lose our temper or say something we wish we hadn’t. We do or say things we are sorry for.
When that happens, we should just say it: I’m sorry.
We should mean it.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 