forgiveness

it's always been a squirrelly concept for me. the hairshirt of catholicism with its confessions,penance and absolution from a guy in a gown was never a good fit. for my first communion, my mom was thrilled, i had a cute lacy dress and shiny maryjanes and there was going to be a big party in the yard. (my dad blew it off at the last minute, no surprise there, but i digress.) even at that lump of clay age, i felt like it was a sham. for crying out loud, i was just a little kid! i actually made up sins to confess for my first real trip to the booth. (btw, what the heck ever happened to my glow-in-the-dark rosary beads? hmmmph...)

cut to my last one where i was banished from the church because i couldn't say the act of contrition. to that priest, the rote mattered over the intent. that i was only in there for my mother's peace of mind before i spent easter sunday in vatican square with the pope saying mass was besides the point.

my mother and grandmother often were heard to say something was "unforgivable," yet we had no murderers or molesters in the family, ya know? it was rare i heard the actual offense, so lacked context, but here's one: a cousin's husband ran off, leaving her and two kids and he was never heard from again. not being forgiven by the two peggy's certainly had no bearing on his life, now did it? maybe that cousin of mine was a raving witch and totally unendurable. i sure don't know and neither did my grandmother, yet she spat on his name for years til the next castigant (i'm making that word up, but i like it) got strung up.

as we all know, my grandmother was an armored tank of lies, duplicity and selfish disregard. we were forced into abetting. she doth protest too much, yeah, yeah.

the whole things smacks of a moral superiority whose mantle i just cannot wear. if somebody hurt my feelings, i rarely think they did whatever deed specifically to harm *me*. more likely, they actually tried to spare my feelings and the thing just went off the rails. all those times my dad flaked for short and long terms? he wasn't trying to hurt me. he just couldn't deal. sucky? mais oui. but maybe his and my grandmother's horrible behaviors gave me the coping mechanism.

the owner is reading a warren zevon bio, a book i've read much about. it's an unflattering and seemingly unvarnished portrait of a voracious sybarite with no conscience or boundaries. for decades everything was magnified and blurred by drugs and booze. there was a long conga line of women, because a) he was a rockstar; b) he was wildly intelligent; c) certain types of women cannot resist a man who is damaged.

i won't posit too much here, because i haven't read the book, but this whole thing came about because the owner stands amazed by the capacity of *forgiveness* exhibited by zevon's kids and lovers. i don't know how they define it, but in my life, i think of it as *acceptance*. i can accept that not everything will be my way, and that life will not be a bowl of perfect peaches every day. i can accept that people will fall down, fuck up,rarely change, but still love me too. i know what grounds me and matters more -- not my pride, but my love for them. somebody i love does something kinda crappy, my impulse is never to strike back or even pull back. i only want to know why. occasionally there isn't an answer, but i have always seen their internal duel. i've never loved a monster, so it's also clear that they struggle with having caused me pain. that's more than enough -- isn't it?

am i playing semantics? i don't think so, because forgiveness also seems to come with a score card. the one holding the high hand has a savant's capacity to dredge up something from the mesozoic era and fling it into the present for drama. my mom can bring up slights from over 25 years ago. how could she not have healed? oh, right, cuz she keeps picking at that scab.

i watched both my mother and hers grow more and more bitter over time. they held on to hurts, and as they hoarded percieved slings and arrows their circles got smaller and smaller. so often, i see women who chose a life of anger, their faces wizened into permanent scowls. i always knew i wanted laugh lines instead.