There’s a Zen saying I’m fond of: We are not punished for our anger. We are punished by our anger.
Yesterday, I was able to reconcile two friends who had become estranged. My efforts were hardly heroic. All I did was tell Friend A that last week Friend B had told me she had no idea what had caused the rift between them and she wished it could be repaired. Friend A immediately asked me to invite Friend B to join us for an evening next week. Friend B accepted, and now these two women who had once been ‘like sisters’ are sisters again.
I come from a family of people with short fuses and long memories. In the house where I grew up, an empty salt shaker could cause an eruption of temper followed by a silence that would last for days. In my family people often didn’t speak for years. In an atmosphere like that, a child learns to tread lightly and read the signals. When I met my husband’s family, I kept waiting for the fault lines to appear in their solid love for one another. It never happened. I was a deeply flawed daughter-in-law but they loved me unconditionally throughout their lives, and by loving me they changed me.
I never would have been a writer if I’d grown up in my husband’s family, but without them, I would never have been a functioning human being.