Can You Say Thank You Too?
Can you say thank you, and maybe "I forgive you" alongside it, even when it feels like the moment for saying it has passed? Mothers and daughters tangle with each other, and daughters have a way of treating as ordinary the things that were never ordinary at all. There was a stretch in my adult life when I built a case against my mom, blaming the way she raised me for the difficulties I later ran into. I kept all of that to myself, though. I never had the nerve to say any of it where she could hear me.
After that came forgiveness. I had learned by then that nobody gets parenting right, that she had worked with whatever she understood at the time. People become parents before they are ready for it. A few of them just assume they are ready. My dad escaped my criticism mostly because he was either at work or asleep, so I had less to pin on him. Somewhere in there I understood that I could forgive her or I could carry the grudge forever, a dead weight strung around my neck.
Then my mind turned to the parts of my childhood she had made happy. She was the room mother, year after year. Every holiday got celebrated and decorated for, and there were Halloween and birthday parties. Family mattered in our house: you visited often, you pitched in when someone needed it. My father held the same view. Both of them treated children as something given by God, and they made certain I had a religious education.
Lately I keep returning to things my parents did that I never bothered to thank them for. I was not a grateful kid. No thanks from me for the trouble they went to hauling me around to Girl Scouts and 4-H, to the county and state fairs, to choir and band and gym shows and school plays. I was a cheerleader in eighth grade too, and they made that possible. The largest thing I walked right past: they paid my way through a private college and then helped stretch my grants in graduate school. I had scholarships, and I worked a bit, but none of it would have added up without them. During college a letter arrived each week with five dollars cash tucked inside, spending money for things the dorm didn't cover, like Sunday night supper. I have no doubt they went without so I could have it.
Is there someone you never got around to thanking, and now the chance is gone? Have you spent your attention on what went wrong between you and overlooked what that person did for you anyway?