Resumo de Some Kind Of Forgiveness

Write your abstract

here.

Maybe it was some kind of forgiveness that saw her

through.

She was in her early thirties with two boy
toddlers.

Her

husband left town. It was the mid-1930s, and she
had no

nearby extended family. There were no ?baby and me?

classes

or single-parent support groups. The husband
relocated

to a

city 300 miles away and returned occasionally--

according to

sketchy courthouse records, the sheriff served him
the

divorce papers as he stepped off the train for a

weekend

visit. He paid his court-ordered child support, but
was

soon out of the picture for the duration; he
married

again,

raised a second family, and had a successful career.

Her name was Esther, which means ?star.? She was my

grandmother. In photographs of her taken back then,

with

and without her little boys, she appears as you
might

expect: a little tired and rough around the edges,
but

clearly satisfied with herself and proud of her
sons.

With

her husband gone, she made a career as secretary to
the

superintendent of schools, probably outlasting more

than

one superintendent. Esther held that job for
decades,

and

when she retired it was front page news in the
local

paper.

Throughout all those years Esther never mentioned
her

former husband. He was present, most certainly, in
the

surname that she kept, relegating her maiden name
to an

upright and sturdy

middle initial. He was present in the faces of her
sons

as

they grew to manhood, as well as in the faces of
the

granddaughters and grandsons who came in due
course.

Present but not present, like someone who has died;
but

we

all knew he was indeed alive and well and absent by

choice.

Esther lived without apparent bitterness or anger

toward

her ex-husband. Where today we might see vindictive

court

proceedings, Esther simply lived -- steadily, even-

handedly. You see it in the pictures she took of
her

sons:

Here is Chester in his 1937 Halloween costume, and
here

is

Alan in his, both costumes brand new and handmade,
each

boy

posed in the exact same spot in the yard. Equal

treatment.

Here are the boys together atop a Civil War cannon
at

Gettysburg battlefield, in matching handmade
outfits

and

caps. Here are the boys with the neighbor kids and

adult

friends who undoubtedly comprised for Esther what
we

today

would call a support system. Later, in wedding

pictures,

she is the lone parent on the side of the groom,
but

not at

all incomplete or self-conscious next to the mother
and

father of the bride. And still later she is the
single

grandparent taking her grandchildren to Gettysburg
and

Colonial Williamsburg and Salem, Massachusetts. It

never

seemed that anything was missing despite the fact
that

something indeed was.

Esther never told the story of her marriage and
divorce

to

her sons and daughters-in-law; her friends who
might

have

known the details never spoke of them, and, like

Esther,

are now long gone. We grandchildren knew,

instinctively,

that the subject was not up for discussion. Whether

raising

it would cause anger or open old wounds we did not

know. It

might just as likely have been a non-issue. In any
case

it

was edited out of the family story despite its real

existence, like text red-lined out of an early
draft of

a

novel. There but not there, like our grandfather.

We?ll never know why Esther maintained this silence
or

what

motivated her to get on with her life the way she
did,

but

of course we speculate. We might surmise that
Esther

moved

ahead out of relief, thankful beyond thankful to be
rid

of

a lost cause of a man. Or that she acted out of a
sense

of

revenge that manifested itself in complete and
utter

competence that says ?You can?t hurt me or anyone I

care

about, no matter what you do or how hard you try.?
Or

perhaps she anesthetized herself through focused
action.

Any of these would be plausible, but as I study
those

old

photos again I more and more come to think that
Esther

found in herself a deep ability to forgive, a kind
of

forgiveness that most of us never have need to
employ.

A

way of forgiveness that enabled her to put the
father

of

her children behind her and move on with a grace
that

would

not have been present in actions taken out of
relief or

revenge or numbness. I think the grace that marked
her

actions is the key to understanding her story.

This year it will be thirty years since Esther
died,

too

young, at seventy. Her former husband lived twenty-

eight

more years. Two or three years after her death, he

dropped

in on the family of the younger of Esther?s sons--
my

father. A subsequent visit by our family to his
home

upstate was an uncomfortable, unnecessary coda to a

relationship that had never existed. He solved no

mysteries, answered no questions. With nothing but

genetic

context in which to think of him as ?grandfather,?

playing

the part of the grandson was out of the question
for

me.

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