Let Not The Son Go Down On Your Anger

 Like all families, we have our share of happy moments as well as struggles and discord. And like many families, I more often than not selectively highlight the good things while tucking the less-than-noble ones in the back corner out of sight. We all display our best side more often than not.

Last night was one of those perfect storms of frustration and anger which opened up the sky as soon as I arrived home. Feuding siblings throughout the day as well as other derailments had my wife emotionally exhausted and frustrated, nursing the sting of perceived failure as a homeschooling mom.  She started verbally unpacking everything on my lap as soon as I walked in the door at 8pm (which, to her credit, she doesn't do all that often). 

I was wrestling with my own frustrations, having just gotten out of my first class of the semester--a graduate writing class which I was initially looking forward to but now made me question the value of the entire system of higher education. I had decided to drop the class (which I was taking as a non-degree student for personal enrichment at the public university), but wanted to talk it over with my wife but who also had no bandwidth to deal with "something else" at the moment. I unloaded the groceries and we sat down at the kitchen table so she could vent about her day.

I try to be cognizant of respecting my children's right to privacy and so I don't write about them much here on this blog. Suffice it to say that as we were discussing the matter my wife's frustrations at the kitchen table were made well known, and on the tail end of my own frustrations in the classroom that evening, I contributed something to the effect of "well, at the rate he (my son) is going with school, college many not be in the cards anyway." I knew as soon as I said it, I shouldn't have (whether or not it was true or not), even if I meant it in the context that he might be better off anyway given how left-leaning the universities are. Unbeknownst to us, my son was eavesdropping in the next room and heard every word. 

We moved into damage control mode and sat him down at the dining room table, while the two of us continued to wrestle with our own feelings of failure and dejection--both with our children and with one another. We know that only a father who disciplines, loves (Heb 12:6) and so while owning what we said and standing behind it apart from the poorly-spoken comment about college (knowing he had heard every word and heard it as he was not capable of getting into college), we took away certain privileges and told him he needed to start doing his work. We exacted this punishment without a heavy hand, but were firm and for his benefit. He kept his head on the table, and said nothing but if I can surmise, all he heard in translation was "I'm bad. I'm stupid. I'm unloved." 

After he went to his room, my wife collapsed into the living room armchair and attended to various text messages that needed responding to. Not having the chance to discuss the matter, or my own day, I waited five or ten minutes for her to look up. When she didn't, and figuring she was done for the day and checked out (and as many husbands may feel, that I was going to get nothing but leftovers anyway from what little mental or emotional energy she still had left), I put on my boots and headed out for my scheduled 11pm holy hour, inadvertently slamming the door a little too hard on the way out. As I was getting in the car the front door swung open and words were...said. I pulled out and a series of texts coming from a place of frustration and hurt started hitting my phone as I was driving to the church. I ignored them, on purpose, but they seared the heart.

As I entered the chapel a half hour early, I dropped to both knees, turned off all the lights, and took a seat in the back, not feeling worthy to do so up front or even hold my head raised before the Lord.  The large stained glass of the young Virgin was illuminated by candlelight and rose up behind her Son exposed on the altar. I couldn't offer my heart on there because of not only the irreconciliation with my son, but now my wife. "So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Mt 5:23-24). I prayed the rosary asking for help but feeling soiled, and after a half hour or so then lay on the row of chairs and closed my eyes.

As I drifted off to sleep, an image of the Virgin materialized. She was clothed in white and lay submerged face up in water reminiscent of Hamlet's Ophelia in Sir John Everett Millais' painting of the same name. As she sat up from the sea as if from sleep, the light rose with her and her arms extended into the air as if at the Presentation. She was releasing the radiant infant Jesus from her chest into the air at a sixty degree angle. 

As the babe was assumed higher and with each cubit away from her, he aged year by year: from a baby to a boy, to a young man and then a man. All the while, he was extending his arms as if preparing to hug his mother. In the vision, the slow gravitational pull which separated him slowly from her slowed to a halt on the ascent. 

The Virgin, now separated from her child having handed him over to the Heavens, watches as two sets of arms materialize and grab the wrists of her son's extended arms. To her utter and knowing heartbreak, she sees they are not to draw him higher home, but to stake them to this earth. They stretch the right limb taunt and secure his quivering and noble hand to the plank and strike a nail, then move to do the same with to the left. The Virgin is sitting up at the waist on the surface of the sea, unmoving yet keeping her arms extended to embrace her son miles away as he suffers and cries upon the cross. But he is miles away; all she can do is watch. She presented her son as a babe at his birth to the Father in the Temple, and now witnesses him as a man embracing his destiny, writhing in full display above the distant shore. 

I rise from sleep around midnight, my arm asleep and my shoulders sore from the wood of the chairs. My 12am replacement has come to relieve me, and I make my way outside from the chapel into the cool night air. I am hungover from the gall of unforgiveness still in my heart and in the smoldering hearth of those asleep at home. We let the sun go down on our anger, and now it has set in stone for the night. I climb into an empty twin bed in one of the kid's rooms and go to sleep.

When I wake up in the morning, I make coffee and a feeble morning offering. I go to the living room, sit in the armchair; my wife comes down a half hour later, the air tense and in stalemate. Eventually things thaw slowly and we start the cold engine of communication. One by one, we rebuild the broken pillars of miscommunication, of anger, of things said and unsaid. We melt closer, forgive by exercise of the will, and get ready for the day.

When my son came down, I thought all would be well. He would be sorrowful, contrite. I waited for him at the bottom of the stairs to embrace him, make things good. But instead, it was if I was a ghost of Christmas past; invisible, not really there. There was no overt anger on his part as he rounds the corner into the kitchen...just memory. 

As the family makes lunches for the day and go over the scenes from Plutarch on the day's agenda, I feel a sense of great inversion. How many times have I ignored and turned my back in spite, brushed by the Lord on the way here and there, who waited for me there in the armchair to make all things new. And now, as the father who both sinned and was sinned against wanting to make things right but having to relinquish my son to his own timing, his own destiny, I remembered the puncturing of the Virgin of the Sea's heart watching the film of salvation history play out, alone in the theater with no one to turn to in her sorrow. I prepared my heart to accept this restitution as my family gathered their bags to leave; the home felt colder inside than out.

I set up my laptop at the kitchen table, a statue of the Virgin with outstretched arms on the bay window mantle in front of me, resigned to spend the day working under the heavy blanket of matters unhealed for the next eight hours. When I turned to get some more coffee, my son was there at my left side. "I'm sorry, dad" he said. 

"I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have said what I said." 

"It's okay. I know."

And that was that. Forgiveness exchanged, the balm of healing applied. I told him to have a good day and that I would see him when he got home. The front door, still shuttering from being slammed so forcefully last night, clicked closed quietly. The sun that had set in indignity was the same sun that rose this morning and the pall that was cast by the sower of tares had been thrown off. Even though the sun hid under the thin grey blanket of clouds and a warm January fog had set in, everything seemed white as the snow.