venting
Anger and hurt, dancing like the steam curling mad over my coffee cup, propel me under until criticism rolls off my tongue. The words have a metallic tang, as though I’ve bitten my lip. I draw my knees up into the chair, wrapping my fingers around my bare feet, feeling the bones. Zoe and I rock and talk, rock and talk, while the afternoon seeps into our skin.
After the first stinging bite, bitterness tastes delicious, an ugly, forbidden sweetness. Our words slam, hard-edged, sharp and slicing. What am I, at the moment, teaching my daughter? I am teaching her that mutual annoyance and justifiable resentment can knit two people together like a crime. But of course teaching that is not my intention. I am hurting out loud: I am venting. My fingers tingle, bloodless and cold, despite the damp sweat beneath my thigh, in the bend of my knee. Zoe leans toward me, nodding. Yes, Mom, you’re right. I agree. It should not have been so. She gathers her long, silken hair in one hand, wrapping it like a bun, letting it fall like our talk, careless, sweeping. Her eyes color like a storm, black-blue and deepening. Our indignation curls and tangles, knotting us together, seething. We are Miriam and Aaron venting; we are Jacob dismissing Laban; we are reckless with disdain. And we are warned.
We are not noble people; don’t ever believe it. We are the worst of sinners. But grace intervenes, and the Spirit moves us to follow (Ezekiel 36:27). No. Stop this. These are impressions more than whispers.
Zoe sits back against her chair, moving her coffee cup into the other hand. I dip my nose until the blunt, nutty smell of coffee blots out the dank, damp memory of last night’s rain. Somewhere, leaves wilt, even as the honeysuckle on the fence begins to bud. “You know,” Zoe starts carefully. How to stop the blood without ignoring the wound? She lifts a hand to shield her eyes. Sun blazes on her head, gold and warm and blinding. She might have moved, but seems instead to turn toward it. “I’ve noticed that they’re nearly always kind,” she says slowly. “I don’t get it; something must have happened that we just don’t know. You know?”
The genuine sincerity of her tone arrests me, and I’m annoyed. She’s saving me, I know this, but I’m upset; and right now I’m not sure I want to be saved. In the same moment, I am also suddenly deeply grateful that my daughter knows who I want to be and is determined to be that with me; that she loves me enough to rescue me from myself. Oh alright.
“Yes. That’s true.” It feels like letting go of some sunken wreck that’s slowly drowning me. My head slides up and out of the suffocating swell, feeling suddenly weightless. A breeze lifts the hair on my arm. “Really, they’re a good friend,” I begin again, as though newly awake. Each word tastes fresh, crisp. “They try hard; they’re more generous, usually, than I am.”
“I’ve noticed that they’re always serving someone,” Zoe says, sipping, thoughtfully remembering. Her observations reassemble a person—breezy hair, calloused fingers, tender limbs. So now it’s not just my daughter and me but also another soul, another breathing body, sharing the space. Some words mutilate; some build. When I imagine my friend here, filling the empty chair, I want to confess that I’ve been unfair and selfish; that I’ve shown no compassion, no grace, no mercy. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, the Spirit reminds (Colossians 4:6). Yes. Without salt, everything rots.
Finally safe and able to feel more than my own bones, to hear more than the sound of my own voice, I look at my daughter again and smile. “I’m sorry. I should be more generous, more kind in what I say, in what I think,” I tell her.
She stretches her arm across the space between us, reaching for me, even though the distance is too wide. “Me too,” she says. The distance doesn’t matter; between us now something has sealed. Something has healed. Together, we have chosen love.
