Musings of a Midlife Mama and Other Stories

“The tarot card reader told me I wasn’t there about my future,” Reba said.  “She said I was there to forgive.”

Reba and I were having lunch at PF Chang’s.  We were celebrating that she’d finally quit the job that was draining her energy and in the words of her husband  turning her into a bitch. 

Although she knew quitting the job was the best thing for her and her family, she still fretted about the what ifs (What if I don’t find another job?) and the whats (What next?).  When a friend recommended Reba get her cards read, Reba leapt at the chance of someone, anyone, telling her what the future held and providing her direction. 

The tarot card reader had set the cards out on a table between her and Reba, and was about to flip one over when she brushed the cards to the side and said to Reba, “You’re here about forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” I asked Reba.

“Forgiveness,” Reba said spooning a mouthful of rice into her mouth.

The word, FORGIVENESS, settled between us as Reba chewed the rice.  Then she explained, “The woman told me I’ve been beating myself up about quitting my job.  In my mind, I’d failed and I wasn’t letting go of this failure.  I’ve been a perfectionist all my life and wasn’t letting myself off the hook.  I wasn’t forgiving myself for being human. ”

Goose pimples raised on my arms.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood rigid.  The sound of the murmurs in the restaurant stopped.  Everything stopped.

Forgiving myself for being human. 

Forgiving myself for making mistakes. 

I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately.  At the beginning of my memoir is a scene with my dad when I was ten-years-old.  He and I were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table.

“You know you pick your parents?” he told me. 

It was the first time in what would be many my dad informed me that I’d actually taken part in deciding this life, my childhood.  Somehow I’d decided I wanted an alcoholic father who changed careers like other people changed their underwear.  And more than that, if I could choose my parents, than I had control over how the rest of my life turned out, right?  Wrong.  Molly’s ruptured appendix and my separation and divorce from Bill were slaps in the face of my perfect persona. 

For the last fourteen years, I’ve been beating myself up for not getting Molly to the hospital as soon as she became ill, for not staying married to Bill, for being messy. 

Forgive me.  I’m human.

I’ve been holding on to my anger over my dad being an alcoholic throughout my childhood, my abandonment.  And it is only  after writing the memoir I realized I wasn’t forgiving my dad for being human.  I realized he did the best job he could under the circumstances.  It was only when I’d said something very similar to my girls about how I’d parented, that I realized it had come full circle.

Someone once said, “Forgiveness means letting go of the past.” 

I’m letting go…