Her words got under my skin leaching deep into the pit of my
stomach…where they churned up what I thought I had resolved decades earlier.
Like reoccurring acid reflux, I regurgitated the conversation back with others.
“Did I mention that while she vented teeth-clenching bitterness about her first
marriage—that ended more than 40 years ago—she failed to mention her own
destructive part?”
Yet, retelling the words to friends and husband did not
bring relief, only more resentment piled atop hurt. My wise husband—probably
wanting his own relief—gently interjected his carefully crafted coaching
question, “Follow that contempt you have about your conversation with your mom.
What’s really underneath her leaving out some details?”
Planting my feet firmly in place with hands on hips, and
chin defiantly tilted up into the air, I protested, “She’s not telling the
whole tru….” But the twitch of a noise magnified by the length of hallway
interrupted my whinging.
“Back a-gain? What a nuisance,” I muttered.
Scritch-scratchings from unidentifiable places coincided
with her appearance. So I wasn’t really surprised by her reflection in the hall
mirror. The petulant little girl and I had encountered one another many times
before. She was swallowed up in my brother’s hand-me-down shirt, unbrushed hair
pulled back into a haphazard ponytail, arms locked across a flat chest,
complete with pouty scowl. “Don’t even think I’m stupid or vulnerable or weak,”
she mouthed the words through her pursed lips. Though a mere reflection from
childhood, her resolve was palpable.
The tomboyish girl in the mirror tracked with me like
precisely painted eyes in a master’s portrait. Wherever I moved, whatever I
did, her cynical viewpoint and voice followed. “I’m sorry, mom,” the small,
insincere voice told my mom, “that your choice to have five children with my
dad was so unbearable.” The little girl’s phoniness nauseated me, even more than
a bouncy boat on a wavy ocean. Her fearful and whiny manipulations would sneak
in through a crack in the back door into conversation with my husband, “I
already had my schedule planned; now I have to rearrange everything…okay, I
guess I’ll go sailing with you.”
While her appearance signaled the presence of intruders, I
prepared to detect and control the sneaky, squeaky, multiply-in-the dark
mousies who nibble away at our safe places. They seem to gather in our garage
seeking any opportunity to slip inside. So we set traps in the garage and hurl
bait into the attic to fend off their droppings and disease. Vigilance is key
when it comes to mice.
Alert to any attack of my personal space, I continued my
juvenile posturing to my mother’s offense, “And furthermore,” I told my
husband, “I don’t want my mom to think that she is fooling me again.”
Managing mice and my mom can be…disturbing. Just the other
day I found a four-legged trespasser ensnared and motionless in the middle of
the garage floor. I dared to reach down to pinch the protruding tripped wire
with a fingertip grasp…when a furry leg wiggled. I lunged for a shop towel and
threw it over him and his trap. There he remained—out of sight—for days, maybe
weeks. To avoid him, I changed my course from house to my car. Finally, the
stench of his decay convinced me that it was safe enough to pinch the trap
tripwire and toss him into the garbage bin.
“I would have scooped him up with a shovel,” my wise friend
advised. Honestly, the idea of using a long-handled tool had never even entered
my mind when I encountered stinking mousies.
Curious about the girl in the mirror, I returned and peered
deeper. I observed a puckered brow pressing into her youthful skin. I noticed
the depth of brown in her eyes and a whisp of playfulness in her childlike
movements. Separated by almost a half-century of mirror, I dared to speak aloud
to her, “I, uh…I was wondering if it would be okay for you and I to get
together?”
“Me? You want to spend time with me?” she asked, perplexed
and wanting to understand.
Already, this young girl had seized my heart with her response…which
was a question.
“I’d like to get to know who you really are. Would you mind
if I asked you a couple of questions?” I responded, wanting to acknowledge her
sweet value...and yet, respect her boundaries.
She lifted her pointer finger to her girlish grin and nodded
a slow up and down.
Granting me permission, I delicately approached her tender
spirit, “What happens when your mom or big people talk like that to you?”
“My heart gets frozen up, like it can’t do what it’s supposed to. Clouds come in and fill up my head. My words run away and I want to disappear with them. But my feet won’t move. No one notices. I am alone.”
“That must be scary to feel like that; I am sorry that no
one noticed.” I imagined placing her hand in between my own two as streams of
tears tumble down my big person cheeks.
Her young hand warmed into mine as she continued, “A long
time ago, my mom loved me and then disappeared. I didn’t cry though. My dad
said bad stuff about my mom. I didn’t want to hear him. I didn’t have words
then either. But I had lots of thoughts.”
‘I’m interested in your thoughts; would you want to share
your thoughts?” gently inviting her to trust me.
“I don’t like feeling
scared and helpless,” her voice a little shaky. “So I thought of some promises
that would keep away people who would hurt me, kinda like the way you try to
keep mice away.” Emboldened by promises made long ago, this underdeveloped
vigilante recited those well-worn promises: “No one will ever surprise and fool me again.” and “They can’t make me do something I don’t want
to.”
Overwhelmed by maternal compassion for this isolated side of
me, I open my heart wide to her, “Next time you are afraid, I will be right
there with you, so you won’t feel abandoned or vulnerable having to fend for
yourself.”
While young Julie softened into my closeness, I embraced all
of her abandonment, fear and vulnerability, assuring her with words that the
adult needed to tell the child, “I’m not going to leave because you matter to me. You are valuable.”
Childhood promises linger like decaying mice that have been
trapped or poisoned. They cause myopia that limit our choices to a finger pinch
instead of a shovel. Omissions or distortion of the truth exasperate “You’ll
never fool me again.” And “You’re not going to make me do anything I don’t
want” resists risky invitations for adventure and fun. Bound by promises and
ill-equipped with a direct voice, immaturity will disingenuously agree and then
resent the situation or people. Even an inanimate and adventuresome sailboat
can become a ‘scapeboat’ for resentment indecision, and defensiveness.
Let’s face it, mice happen. I mistakenly thought that
strength and freedom came with protecting the promises…which were supposed to
protect me. But recognizing and challenging those childhood promises is more
fruitful and freeing. Not an overnight process but one that requires
vulnerability—really?—and a long-reaching tool.
Biblical wisdom is a tool that offers grace and hope with
the little girl in the mirror, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and
have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, [The
Lord] will not forget you!” This
tool has even helped with my mice problem. They are still there but I see mice
differently, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you..”
Posted with
permission from the girl in the mirror.
