Children have a way of forcing us to revisit our past and to re-examine the truth about it. I remember the seething anger with which I walked out of my marriage to live separately from my sweetheart- I never divorced him (don't ask me why - I haven't figured that one out yet.) If you asked me at the time of leaving I could easily reel off ten reasons - a couple of which were strongly justifiable in popular view. If you ask me now I wouldn't be so sure. And that uncertainty crept in when my two babies, aged about four and six at the time; asked me so innocently 'Mom, tell us the truth, were we adopted?' I don't know what feeling hit home first: Guilt for not sharing with them the reason we were living so far away from their Daddy or the pain of knowing that they were missing him so much. As young as they were, society had already inflicted on them its misconceived norms of how many people should make up a family and they figured there was someone missing in the picture. Poor little tots were trying to figure out why?
I wish I could say that I immediately sat them down and told them the whole truth and nothing but the truth - that would be a lie. It takes time for us to deal with the truth honestly. We know the truth, in fact we live right through it but when the truth is too painful to share we hide it somewhere in our sub conscience and let it remain there undisturbed until some nosy kids shock us into searching for it and staring it square in the face. And so the truth is that the multiple reasons I used to give for walking out of my marriage were eroded with time. They were eroded by that sneaky truth that kept slipping out of its hiding place to confront me. My initial reasons were all his fault (of course,) but the truth showed up now and again to point me to the part that was my responsibility and after wrestling with truth for long enough you simply give up because truth is so powerful. Now that he is gone for good, I regret that while he was alive I did not find the courage to tell John, that the reason we were friends again towards the end was because I had made peace with the truth and owned up to my part in the breakdown of our relationship.
I wish I could say that I immediately sat them down and told them the whole truth and nothing but the truth - that would be a lie. It takes time for us to deal with the truth honestly. We know the truth, in fact we live right through it but when the truth is too painful to share we hide it somewhere in our sub conscience and let it remain there undisturbed until some nosy kids shock us into searching for it and staring it square in the face. And so the truth is that the multiple reasons I used to give for walking out of my marriage were eroded with time. They were eroded by that sneaky truth that kept slipping out of its hiding place to confront me. My initial reasons were all his fault (of course,) but the truth showed up now and again to point me to the part that was my responsibility and after wrestling with truth for long enough you simply give up because truth is so powerful. Now that he is gone for good, I regret that while he was alive I did not find the courage to tell John, that the reason we were friends again towards the end was because I had made peace with the truth and owned up to my part in the breakdown of our relationship.
At 50 I know that being honest is something we are all proud of but in all honesty, it is not something that we can claim to be 100% of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment