The hardest thing about being a mother is that you never feel as though you’ve done enough. So many nights I go to bed wondering, pondering, construing, and often misconstruing, I am sure, how I might have done better at something for or with my one of my children.
It’s particularly hard when you witness your child struggling to accomplish or overcome an obstacle.
Bullies at school, teachers who seemed to have landed from a planet where all inhabitants have forgotten what it was like, or just how difficult it is to be a child.
To be sure, growing up is hard to do.
And then there are the times when I’ve lost my temper and/or patience. Fortunately I know and often use the words, “I’m sorry.”
I hope my children, when adults, will remember me not so much for what I accomplished or did for them, but mainly for the times I was willing and did ask for their forgiveness, the moments when I admitted very openly and honestly, not necessarily in front of a big crowd as perhaps on Oprah, but between me and them, and in the moment that I caused the injury, that I had made a terrible mistake, and in so doing, added, “Mommy was wrong. Will you accept my apology? Please forgive me.”
We will never know how many incursions and battles, small and large could and would have been avoided had one or the other or some of those involved had stepped forward and said, “We’re sorry.”
Again, and to be sure, we know that the world would be a safer and more enjoyable and fun place had this been done more in the past and if more people did this now in the present.
In that we have not reached this point in the evolution of human consciousness many individuals continue to inflict pain and suffering, in large and small proportions, upon others.
And so as writers we tell the stories, chronicle what we see, and ideally, what we have done. In an effort to grow and change, we hopefully craft characters whose lives move into a place of living and being, doing and loving, forgiving and atoning in a manner to which we aspire.