On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
- By Kelly Diels
- 2 September, 2009
- 17 Comments
When I was eight or nine, my mother grievously injured my fragile soul.
She may have asked me to clean my room. Possibly she made me put down my Nancy Drew to wash dishes. In all likelihood, she gave me grief for sassing her.
[Note to self: there is a lesson here. This dynamic - my unrepentant, inevitable and perennial backtalk and my mother's attempt to curb it - was the mainstay of our relationship, I believe, and a lesson in the frustration and futility of attempting to alter another's temperament and inclination.
Her efforts to de-sassify me were for naught.
This is why parenting sucks. We're supposed to shape and smooth and socialize small wild animals with pointy teeth and even more pointed wills and we're supposed to enjoy it.]
[Note to self's note: The sins you commit are the sins you will suffer. My mother endured snide comments and outright challenge from me from the time I spoke my first word to the the time I moved out. I now know her delicious pain. I'm three years into it. Her name is Lola.]
[Note to my dearerst of dear readers: If you really love me, you will babysit the little political one. The one who, when the choice to behave or not behave and the attendant consequences are outlined to her, tells me: "No, that's YOUR choice. I'M taking the power."]
Whatever happened, what ultimately happened was that I was banished to my room where I cried hot, insulted, evidently wholly unloved tears into my frilly pillow. I cried myself through the afternoon and into a sweaty sleep.
When I awoke, my questioning heart was heavy and needed answers and as every slighted child knows, the best replies are found in the heavens, or at least the ceiling, or if you’re the girliest of girls, in the ruffled canopy that arches over your bed. So I did that.
I contemplated the injustice inscribed in winding lines of flowering vines on the fabric of my bed’s canopy – the bed I had received for my birthday after earmarking years of editions of the Sears catalogue. I wanted a pink canopy bed but I received a burgandy one. Clearly That Woman hated me.
And I needed her to love me, more than ever, because she was mad at me. Because she hurt me. Because I knew then, and I know now, that the one who makes the cut should bind the wound.
If I am a nectarine – and I am – then this bit of knowledge is the pit that I carry. Hard, inedible, necessary, generative.
Je m’excuse. I am sorry. The words don’t matter but the hunger must be fed.
My children know this, too. When I have wounded them, and exiled them to their rooms to contemplate their ceilings – and they are even more oppressed than I was, as they lack canopied beds – their hearts break loudly open.
They protest. They protest me. They grieve their pain. They blame me for their wounds. And when the protesting and sobbing subsides, they need me to kiss them and their boo-boos better.
This is what I remembered, this weekend, when life was an archer and launched arrows of outraged misfortune at me and forced me to contemplate my own ceiling. Meditating on the intricacies of the fifth wall yielded these conclusions:
- The developer who built this house had the good sense not to spray texture on the ceilings of the first two levels of the house, but somehow that sense departed him on the third story. This is unfortunate. Textured ceilings are a crime against design.
- Life doesn’t have very good aim because no actual organs – including my heart – were irreparably harmed in the making of this misfortune. But pride has poor circulation and bruises vividly. It is almost satisfying to behold.
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is woefully incomplete and should be updated, preferably by me. I’ve mentioned this before.
- Aggrieved souls need apologies.
So, yes, dearest perceptive readers, someone hurt my feelings, and hurt my feelings in a way that was almost masterly: I endured – oh the agony, oh the woe, oh oh oh – a snub that was successful, effective, essential, repetitive, and, I think, remorseless.
Still, despite my suspicion that the villain in this story is not sorry and never will be, I crave a conversation, an explanation, an apology.
Apologies are magic. They are the play button when a relationship has been paused. Interrupted. Broken. An apology can bridge that distance, span that cleavage, heal that break, and start that song, again.
But only when they are real. And offered. And neither of these words captured the absence dancing across my ceiling.
So what to do with my truth, my stone fruit, that only the person who harms you can heal you?
_________________
this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:
On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3
The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5
*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it
About the author
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OK, Kelly: so, so beautiful, poignant, and full of all the emotion the topic and story deserve – that you deserve to express!
I have known many such ceiling-starings (and have inflicted the same on my own daughters). Your words invite me to apologize to them – and to grieve the places where I’ve not been offered the same…
But like you, I can talk to my small self and better understand why such still hurts my less-small self.
It is beautiful what you do with your truth: you speak it, let it be seen, and bring it down from past and current ceilings to earthy, pithy, reality! Thank you.
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Oh, Ronna, thank you so much for your eloquent words – they are more beautiful than the post they’re talking to! And thank you for encouraging me yesterday to keep writing and to try and capture the emotion. Much love, K
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Wow, you really paint the picture, and I weep for your textured ceilings and your pain. Take that nectarine pit and polish it on the concrete step to your front door. Make it smooth and glossy and beautiful and remember that the clod who hurt you is now despised by your faithful readers. If you care to name names, I could round up a couple hundred of us to go stick our tongues out at the offender. I’m just saying.
On behalf of your flock, I kiss your boo-boo.
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Leah, you just made me laugh happily out loud. Would you believe me if I told you it was William Shatner? (http://thebloggess.com/?p=3605)
Okay, maybe it wasn’t William Shatner, but I wish it was. That would be way more fun! And then maybe I wouldn’t have to take action on the ceiling situation. Because this texture business has got to go.
Thanks for the comment and the smile and the kissed boo boo. I am blessed.
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This is my ongoing list of things Kelly Diels said that I wish I said:
1)The sins you commit are the sins you will suffer
2)If I am a nectarine – and I am – then this bit of knowledge is the pit that I carry.
3) Life doesn’t have very good aim because no actual organs – including my heart – were irreparably harmed in the making of this misfortune. But pride has poor circulation and bruises vividly. It is almost satisfying to behold.
4)Apologies are magic. They are the play button when a relationship has been paused. Interrupted. Broken. An apology can bridge that distance, span that cleavage, heal that break, and start that song, again.
5)So what to do with my truth, my stone fruit
Besides your inspiriational blog, in the past you said that you weren’t/ or didn’t consider yourself spiritual, but the act of forgiveness/ the act of forgiving… isn’t that enlightenment… to reach the point where you can forgive yourself and others… aren’t all walls broken when that occurs? You, my dear… are a lovely writer… a spiritual writer whether you like it or not… and deeply rooted in all of who we are… (and yes, you can publish my review on the back cover of your book!)
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Wow. just wow.
thank you, Mozart.
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I was crushed today when I discovered that my beautiful wretched three year old boy had fallen asleep while banished to his room after his sleep deprived antics sent me careening over the edge. After a few minutes of deep breathing (and quickly checking whether anyone wanted said wretched three year old, but alas, there were no takers), I returned to make up with him. He was asleep, and I could tell it wasn’t his normal peaceful sleep. I was heartbroken to think that he fell asleep with his mommy’s sharp words still ringing in ears. He awoke in a much better mood, and we cuddled and made up. Still I sit with this guilt. I didn`t want my baby to learn at such tender age that although the person who hurts you should make amends, that sometimes doesn`t happen. Sigh.
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Kelly,
This is an excellent, eloquent piece, as usual.
I just adopted a daughter from China almost two months ago, and while she’s mostly an angel now at 14 months, I am afraid I know the disobedient devil that’s bound to come. You made me think of this (chill).
BTW, thank you so much for twittering me!!
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Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3
This week I’m obsessing about forgiveness, being sorry, and sorry ways to be sorry. Josh Hanagarne of the wildly weird and wonderful World’s Strongest Librarian has some ideas about that too. Here’s his guest post about lame apologies – and the very first guest post on my site, ever. Thanks, Josh. Three Lame Types Of Apologies by Josh Hanagarne The Screamed Apology I was outside a Wal-Mart recently when I saw a woman in pajamas dragging her shirtless child across the parking lot. She was pulling him too fast and he couldn’t …
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