I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately, and how we carry things around with us from the past, so I thought I’d let a couple of characters from my upcoming novel, Lucky Change, be my guest columnists today. Here is a little background. Karen is a single parent to Delia and Austin and has struggled financially for the better part of her life, until a change of circumstances occurred in her life. It is Fast Sunday, and Dee, a young adult, for the first time in years, shared what was supposed to be a testimony during the meeting, but which turned out to be a diatribe, sharing some of the pain of her youth when the girls from church made fun of her new Christmas dress years ago. Dee has just begun to face up to the fact that she is an alcoholic and has started attending AA meetings, another thing she shared.
By the time Dee got home, Karen was sitting in the living room. She picked up her Ensign, and then reached for The Reader’s Digest instead. The Ensign stories reminded her too much of church, and she wanted to stop thinking about church, at least she didn’t want to think about that day’s meeting. But even the jokes in The Reader’s Digest were not enough to put her into a jovial mood. When Dee walked through the door, Karen got up and gave her daughter a hug, holding her a few seconds longer than usual.
“I made yer favorite, Fish Stick Sandwiches and Cherry Garcia ice cream.”
“Mom, you’re rich. You don’t need to eat Fish Stick Sandwiches anymore.”
“But I know you love ‘em. I’m livin’ high. I put a little Grey Poupon on mine.”
Dee smiled. “I kind of let the ward have it today, huh? That’s not exactly what I had in mind to do, but it is what came out.”
“Well maybe it was like puss oozin’ outta a wound, part of the healin’ process. We survived them, and they’ll survive us. Now let it heal and don’t pick off the scab.”
“I thought you were gonna be upset at me. You always defended everyone before.”
“Sometimes people don’t deserve defendin’. Why didn’t you tell me about the dress? I always wondered why you never wore it again. Ya told me you spilled something on it.”
“You had worked so hard, Mom, and that dress meant so much to me and to you.”
Karen slammed the plates of food down a little too hard on the table. Dee could count on one hand the times she had seen her even-tempered mother angry. “They never knew, none of ‘em, how much I scrimped and saved to buy you that dress, the one I had seen you looking at in the store window every single time we went by that store, how just for once I wanted you to have something nice, something new.”
“Mom, it was a long time ago. Don’t be angry.”
“I am! I’m angry. You’re still hurt and angry. Why shouldn’t I be, too?”
“Because you are always the one who turned the other cheek and just figured out how to get along with everybody, no matter what. If I’ve just stirred your feelings up, too, then I don’t know why I’m even going to AA. I’m supposed to be getting rid of the anger, not spreading it around and making other people angry.”
“Oh Dee, these smiles’ve covered many a heartache, too, but I knew I couldn’t give in to feelin’ sorry for m’self or I might just sit down one day like a donkey in the road and refuse to get back up. You kids were what kept me goin’, Dee. Why don’t you call Mandee down.”
Karen said a quick prayer over the food, and the three of them sat down to eat. Mandee piped up, “Mom, this year I’m gonna buy you a Christmas dress. Gramma said if I picked one out with you, maybe you wouldn’t feel so sad about your other Christmas dress.”
Dee looked down at her young daughter. Gosh, I forgot Mandee was listening to all that, too. “You would do that for me?”
“Sure would. Gramma told me she would come up with some chores I could do to earn some money.”
“For which I’m sure you will be grossly overpaid.”
“You can count on it.
” Karen grinned.
“A bunch of people came up to me after the meeting and told me they were proud of me for facing up to things,” Dee said. “I think I came down a bit too hard on people today, but it wasn’t fair the way those girls treated me. It wasn’t fair that they had everything and I had the leftovers.”
“And it ain’t fair now that we’ve got more money than I can figger out how to spend, and even if I can, it makes more babies while I’m givin’ it away.”
“What I don’t understand, Ma, is how’d you survive it and not feel the same way. Ya must’ve known how some of the people in the ward looked down on us.”
“Sure, I knew that, Dee. I ain’t stupid. Ya know my fav’rite picture in the bedroom is the one of the Saviour carrying a little lamb draped over his shoulders. When times got tough, I just thought of myself as that little lamb, and I knew He would carry me through. Life ain’t fair to a lot of people, Dee, but I always had someone who understood about that. Do ya think it was fair what they did to Jesus? He was the only perfect man ever walked the earth. He spent His time healin’ and helpin’ people, and they crucified him. Whatever unfairness we’ve experienced, it ain’t gonna come close to that. He didn’t just take our sins on him, He suffered the most unfair thing of all, and that meant He always understood whatever unfairness I was goin’ through. Ya can’t spend yer time tryin’ to fix other people’s sins, Dee. Everybody’s got somethin’ they struggle with. There ain’t a ‘Snobs Anonymous’ for people like Alison Arletti, but maybe somethin’ humblin’ will happen to her someday.”
“I hope so!”
“Dee, that’s the part you gotta work on. If you’re waitin’ for God to smite your enemies for ya, if you’re wishin’ bad things on ‘em, that’s just somethin’ else you gotta work on. Ya gotta let go of the anger and hope that someday Alison has the experiences she needs, not because ya want bad things to happen to her but because ya want her to be the best person she can be. Someday, maybe, you’ll have a time when someone from the past comes to realize somethin’ they did wrong and tries to make up for it, but if they don’t, don’t do you no good goin’ through life angry.”
Karen continued. “You ‘ve been holdin’ on too tight to those bad feelings. Shoo ‘em away, like a big flock of birds, and they’ll scatter and fly away. Instead, most folks carry around a big bag of bird seed and keep their bad feelings followin’ ‘em around.”
She threw out a handful of imaginary bird seed. “I never in a million years thought Toni Cirroni would come over and visit me in a home she used to own and crochet with me and watch a funny movie, laughin’ and eatin’ popcorn and raw cookie dough. She was my visiting teachin’ partner for years, and she always went alone. She told people our schedules didn’t match up. I knew it wasn’t our schedules that didn’t match up, but that wasn’t my battle to fight, but like Adrienne said, it was hers.”
“It don’t bother you that she never treated ya with any respect until you had some money?”
“It ain’t that simple, Dee. It just ain’t.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand, how ya kept bein’ lovin’ to people who treated ya bad.”
“That’s the gospel in a nutshell, lovin’ people. Ain’t that what it says in the scriptures, Dee? Ain’t that what Jesus’s life was all about, tellin’ us how to love people that ain’t nice to us, to turn the other cheek and love your enemies and be good to people that ain’t good to you? I believe in that power, the power of God, the power of love, Dee, and the power of lettin’ go of stuff, of bein’ forgivin’. I ain’t one of them people that can understand the scriptures backwards and forwards, but I’ve got enough smarts t’ get that part.”
“It would help if they would apologize or something. You oughta hear some of the things Toni said when you bought this house.”
“Toni can’t help it if she was born beautiful and rich.
Dee, we might’ve been snobs, too, given different circumstances. It’s just a different kind of unfairness. Havin’ too much can be more damagin’ to the soul than havin’ too little. If it ain’t pride that gets ya, then ya gotta watch out for envy. In the end, we’re all just stumblin’ along together, Dee, trippin’ over each other and holding each other up the best we can.”
* * *
Lucky Change is due out in November from Cedar Fort Publishing