Pint Size Lessons in Forgiveness

“She tends to sulk when she’s angry.” That sentence about my almost five-year-old daughter pierced like a sharp toy in a foot’s arch. Was our preschool teacher describing me or my child? . I figured my future involved two females in hormonal upheaval who would find co-habitation a tad challenging.  I expected years of puberty sulking torment... but did we have to start the process so early?

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As I listened to our caring, wise preschool teacher describe how my daughter child holds on to her anger, I almost had to laugh. Was silent scorn a well-known component of our gene pool? Couldn’t they have warned me during our genetic counseling sessions? And how come my well endowed Y chromosome son (and husband) could throw a terrorizing fit and be over it five minutes later?

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I remember attending “Forgiveness Guru” Fred Luskin’s seminar a few years ago. in Silicon Valley. When it came down to gender differences, he said, women had the anger-holding game down.  The guys play hard and move on.  Us women?  Let's just say we wear resentment like an old brown cashmere sweater, so comfortable, so familiar, trashing it feels terrifying on some level.

Perhaps the sophistication of my daughter’s sulking is what I find most alarming. I could understand her anger over a sibling spat or friendship fight. But she’s already fuming about deep issues of fairness, perceived manipulation and slights. Take this morning. I invited her to help me find a lost slipper, a beloved Christmas present to me from her father. She took up the cause with gusto, peeking under couches, turning over floor rugs, rummaging among her dozens of stuffed animals. “I can’t find it!” she announced with frustration. Minutes later I actually found it, stuffed in the hall closet with the hats. I had put it there by mistake.

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To my daughter our morning “search party” was no party at all. I had used her for my own gain, guilted her into helping me when in fact I was the one who lost the valued slipper in the first place, and even gave myself the “prize” of finding it again. She found this unforgivable. Her mom was a “user.” “I will not forgive you!” she screamed, hurling soggy Honey Cheerios on the floor. I understood the feeling. I understood the anger.

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When I’m a “good enough” mother I can see the gift of these moments, the uncomfortable times that our children mirror the very same issues with which we struggle. When I’m a “perfectionist, blocked” mother I can’t bear to see the resemblance of myself relived minus forty years. I want to move on, get everything better, “fix it.” Fortunately this morning was good enough and I found myself reminding my daughter that when we fail to forgive we are ultimately the ones who pay the price.

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Sure, I has all the “right” words, but five year olds see things their own way. “I’ll be angry the rest of my life,” my daughter retorted to my high-minded forgiveness lecture. So instead of a deep discussion about forgiveness we talked about what it would be like to be angry for life. Just mad all the time. An angry worm eating out your insides, crawling through your heart, gnawing apart all your clumps of love, light and happiness. Now we were getting somewhere.

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Eventually the “angry worm” left my daughter’s body, and hopefully won’t be seeking full-time residence in mine anytime soon.  But when the angry worm attacks, as it surely will, but my great hope is that I show it the exit door minus the silent scorn.  Holding on takes so much work! And besides, when the worms go away, joyful, hopeful flowers bloom in their place. Ahh…Spring, bring on the sun!