Interesting, isn’t it, how your perspective can change based on a single incident.
\nRomantics want to believe in love at first sight, for example.
\nSocial\/political behaviorists say that a mugging can turn a Liberal into a Conservative.
\nThis past week, I had a perspective-altering experience that may or may not be permanent. It wasn’t as major as falling in love or being attacked in a dark alley, but for me, it was significant.<\/p>
\nFor many years, maybe as many as I’ve been on this planet, I’ve had a troubled relationship with a person who I grew up with, an older woman now in her 90’s.
\nTo put this into a more or less “fair” perspective, she’s a person whose childhood was impoverished in many respects, and not just because of money.
\nHaving lost her father and her older sister at a very young age, she was scarred as a child, growing up with a mother who, for all her courage in keeping the family together, was nonetheless a sharp-tongued harridan who ruled her household with an iron fist and frequent, open-handed slaps.
\nAfter trying, probably hundreds if not thousands of times to find a common ground with this person, I gave up over 3 years ago. She literally wore me out with her argumentative, critical and over-competitive nature. Through the years, she’s made a mess of things, undermining my relationships with people whom I hold near and dear, failing to tell me the truth about matters important to me, and possibly shading the truth about incidents that concerned me directly.
\nThus, this past Monday, when I opened my mailbox to find a note from this woman, I had to fight off that familiar, sickening, tightening around the sternum feeling.
\nThe note was a masterpiece of contradiction: claiming that I owed her $2,500 from a long-forgotten loan, she wrote that “(she) could use the money” and then magnanimously offered, for reasons that were nonsensical at best and intrusive at worst, to forgive half the amount.
\nWith no dates or any kind of written documentation, I had no idea what she was writing about. I asked someone in the family to look into it for me. This is what she said:
\nIt turns out that back in 1999, prior to one of my many moves, the old woman had, indeed, given me a loan. She was sure of the amount, $2,500, although she had no written record.
\nBased on her say-so, the family member explained enough of the details that I was able to look back on banking records that are this point over 4 years old.
\nThis is a feat in itself because a) I hate anything to do with money and b) my record-keeping is generally not the greatest. Usually, anything involving paper is going to end up in a pile rather than being filed away.
\nIn this case, though, I was lucky: my banking records for that time period were neatly arranged in 3-ring binders, with copies of the cleared checks on 8 1\/2 x 11 pages rather than the usual unmanageable bundles of the actual checks themselves.
\nSure enough, I tracked down over $2,000 in payments to the old woman, including two checks for $1,000 apiece that were cashed in May 2000.
\nThe other $500 I couldn’t account for, nor the original amount of the loan. But having struggled for a day or two over how I was going to repay $2,500, $500 seemed like short money.
\nMy guess is that either she had the amount wrong, or that I’d paid her the last $500 from another account.
\nIt doesn’t really matter to me. What’s important is that two people who have held me in low regard as a “taker” for literally my whole life now have proof, written proof, from an objective third party that their opinion of me was wrong.
\nThey may not get the message from this little incident, but I have: who knows how many other times they’ve been wrong about me, misinterpreting my words or my actions, putting me in a bad light as the “black sheep”?
\nI’ve been very lucky recently, landed a good job, and am starting to get myself on my feet after a couple of years of financial hardship.
\nSo, perhaps in part because it’s Christmas, I sent the old woman a card, with copies of the checks that had been processed so long ago, and another check, a “live” one, for $250.
\nI explained that since I couldn’t document the final payment which she claims I owe that this was in the way of a holiday gift, similar to the ones that used to be given to her own mother at annual family gatherings, where she would ceremoniously be handed envelopes by her then-adult children as she sat, regally, the esteemed and respected matriarch.
\nI promised to send the other $250, “shortly”. I told her to use the funds to ease her current financial problems. I wished her a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
\nInadvertently, the ugly little note turned into a piece of salvation for me. It ultimately provided a sliver of self-worth that has been steadily eroded for almost 60 years.
\nI’m halfway expecting another passive-aggressive, cleverly nasty little note from the old woman, challenging my documentation and\/or my integrity and\/or my veracity.
\nBut if such a note does arrive in my mailbox, I’ll know one thing for certain: she would be WRONG.
\nAnd the things my close friends, business associates and most especially my grandchildren say about me – that I’m a nice person, a good person, a person who they can count on, who they like, and who they respect – are RIGHT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interesting, isn’t it, how your perspective can change based on a single incident. Romantics want to believe in love at first sight, for example. Social\/political behaviorists say that a mugging can turn a Liberal into a Conservative. This past week, … Continue reading