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Marge turned to her friend as she spoke, reached out, clasped her arm for a moment, then continued, "On Monday, I was cleaning up in the kitchen. Michael was in the other room eating his lunch in front of the TV, and I heard him say, 'Uh-oh. . . . Uh-oh.'
"I knew right away what he had done. I just knew he had spilled his milk. I had thought he might do that when I had put his food on that wobbly tray and let him sit in his daddy's big easy chair.
"Anyway, when he said 'Uh-oh' the third time, I tore off a strip of paper towel, just like you did with Jason, Marilyn, and I went in and said, 'Here, Michael, you help Mommy clean up the milk.'
"Well, you should have seen him. There he was all scrunched down in that big chair, his hands sort of up around his neck, like this, so quiet, so frightened. When I asked him to help me clean up the spill, he looked up at me, and such a wonderful expression came over his face. Michael took the towel and helped me clean his tray. He was really glad to help!"
Marge shifted awkwardly in her chair, canvassing each face in the group for a long moment. "Then, I tell you, he really got to me. He looked up with those big brown eyes of his and asked, 'Mommy, why didn't you beat me?' " Marge's eyes filled with tears.
"I just didn't know what to say. All I could think was, 'What have I done to this child of mine that he should be expecting a beating for spilling half-a-cup of milk?' I just touched his little head and got back to the kitchen where he couldn't see my teary eyes. . . .
"That's why I'm so grateful for our get-togethers and for the chance to share with each of you, because I'm learning things here I know I've wanted to do but haven't done on my own till now. I've been doing the same, old, dumb things my mother did to me. Like with Michael . . . why didn't I think of Marilyn's paper towel before, instead of carrying on the way I always did and upsetting everyone? I tell you, in those three minutes Michael understood more about growing up than he ever learned from three years of spankings put together! Oh, I can still see his face looking up at me when he said, 'Why didn't you beat me?' "
Marge's story is real, and so is her predicament. It's the human story, our human predicament. None of us seems able to completely break out of our destructive, circular, "parents-to-children" patterns without some sort of outside help, without other possibilities being shown to us in a personal way.
For Marge, the circle which kept her doing the things she didn't want to do, was broken into by some practical alternatives shared among a dozen sympathetic, nonjudgemental mothers who had learned the value of sharing important things in their lives.
Art White is a retired pastor and a freelance writer from Clementsvale, N.S.
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