Dedications Series - The Payment

 

This copy of my “Collected Poems” is dedicated to my mother, Doris A. Sanford. It was my mother who taught me the value of honesty, in literature as well as in life. These poems are as honest as I can make them.

 

 

The Payment

 

The memories of things that matter have fierce and eloquent faces. 

I remember my mother’s face: red, freckled and indignant, on my behalf, on the day I broke the Christmas lights.

It wasn’t my idea, but I remember how much fun it was when Bernie, the kid from across the street, showed me how the next door neighbor’s Christmas light bulbs popped when you smashed them on a rock. We huddled up under her bushes, and unscrewed and annihilated 10 or 15 of her bulbs. It wasn’t until I went home for dinner, that I started to feel bad. 

I became acquainted with my conscience in a hurry. I hadn’t had a need for one until then, and I could have wished I never would, except that I was too busy trying to squirm out of its way. I finally cried uncle; went to my mother in shame and trepidation, and confessed my terrible crime. I thought she would be angry with me, but she wasn’t. She simply said, “What do you think you should do?” I said, “Pay for them out of my piggy bank...”.

She didn’t laugh. She told me how much Christmas light bulbs cost and helped me count out enough to pay for them. I didn’t know the neighbor lady, and I was shy. My mother never told me what to do or how to do it. She went with me over to the neighbor lady’s house, but she didn’t explain. The neighbor lady tried to talk to Mom, but Mom just looked at me and her, and the neighbor lady had to listen to me. I told her I had broken her lights, and that I wanted to pay for them. She started to say, “ Oh no, honey, it’s okay....”, and it was then that my mother got mad. She wasn’t mad at me when I told her what I had done, but she got mad at the neighbor lady for not wanting to take my money to fix the lights I had broken. I was a little scared, because it seemed so important to my mother, and because I didn’t know what had made her so angry. She hadn’t interfered until then, but she told the neighbor,

“You will take her money!”

I think the neighbor was a little offended by my mother’s wrath.

(It has just occurred to me for the first time, that the neighbor probably thought that my mother had forced me to come over to pay for the bulbs, and thought her a harsh disciplinarian.)

 

I tried to understand what made her mad, and I realized that she was proud of me for coming to her, and for wanting to make amends for what I had done wrong. It was because I had done this on my own that it was so important to allow me to make it right. How many mothers would have done such a thing?

I have tried to see myself as that child: too serious and imaginative to ever be comfortable with other children; a lonely dreamer.

What did my mother see on that winter day, when I came in from playing outside and told her my trouble?

What was in her heart when I made the choice, on my own, to pay for them?

What did it cost her to let me speak for myself; and worse still, to let the neighbor think the worse of her? 

I try to imagine her pride in a child who had the courage to confess a wrong and make amends all on her own, as she walked across the dark street with me; the knock on the door, and the look on the neighbor’s face.

I try to imagine her struggle to keep silent, and the deep conviction that this was much more important than a few broken bulbs and a trivial prank.

I try to feel my mother’s instinct that this event was momentous: a crucial step for a child so young to make.

I try to imagine her outrage at the stupidity of the neighbor: “How could she not see how important this is? How could she not see my pride and joy? How dare she spurn a child’s first act of moral courage?”

I also know my mother has forgotten all about it by now, and I need to tell her that I don’t believe there is any other memory I have that holds the power of this one. If she had not done what she did I would have been a different person. Her instinct was right. It did matter, terribly, whether that neighbor lady accepted my apology and my amends— 

Ever after, for the rest of my life, I would be able to know the right thing and to do it, and in moments of weakness and fear I would be able to see my mother’s fierce indignant face and find the strength to make that choice.

 

 

Mama, You have the first copy of the first edition after improvements. I thought it was fitting for you to have the one I went back and fixed. Don’t let Daddy get started trying to figure out what’s different between yours and his, okay? 

Love, Leah —

Christmas 2000