September 1, 2012

• I’m (Not) Judging You, Or A Story I Never Told My Parents

  I recently had occasion to witness yet another parent put her petty desires over the welfare of her children.  It was a brief interaction, and the only one on which I could base my judgment of this woman, who was a stranger to me, but it was significant enough that I felt my conclusions were not unwarranted.

  I started to hear a friend’s voice in my head, however.  (In a totally normal, Not Insane, no-need-for-medication way.  You know, like when you can hear what your mom’s going to say before you even pick up the phone?)

  My friend never admits that women do anything wrong.  His version of feminism requires the belief that all women, everywhere and at all times, are virtuous, thanks in part to what they have suffered at the hands of Everyone.

  He often makes helpful points, though, this friend, and Lord knows I do enough dumb things in public that leave witnesses questioning my character.  It’s certainly the case that making judgments about character based on a single interaction, or a small set of interactions, is a bad idea; and, theologically speaking, one wants to avoid trespassing on God’s exclusive jurisdiction, which is, of course, the judging of souls.

  But this was one incident where I could confidently say that a woman made an honest-to-goodness, wrong, harmful, and even (here’s where I put on my theologian’s hat) sinful mistake.  There may be context that explains, but none that excuses.  I may (I do) have a religious obligation to extend to her the grace and forgiveness and powerful healing love that Christ offers, but pretending she didn’t make a real mistake won’t help that process along any.

  The interaction reminded me of something that happened when I was ten or eleven.  It’s one of those stories you never tell your parents.  (Sorry, Mom and Dad!  It turned out okay, though, right?)

  I was spending the night at a friend’s house.  (I think I’d done it several times, but this is the only one that remains in my memory.)  Her step-father was away, but her mom and her half-sister, who was two or three, were home.

  We were sitting up eating ice cream and playing games while her mom put baby sister to bed.  When her mom came back into the room, she was putting the last few hairpins into a long, blond wig she had just put on.

  “What do you think?” she asked us.

  I can’t remember the details of what she was wearing, nor how her face looked, but I remember being transfixed by her hair.  It matched her real hair in color and texture, and she pinned it about where one would put a headband.  The front third of her own hair was curled and teased around it so that you couldn’t see where the hairpiece started.

  Whatever she was wearing on her body and her face, she was utterly transformed, and it was both attractive and unsettling.  I could tell that she looked “better”–that she had paid extra attention to her appearance–but I couldn’t bring myself to say so.  There was something . . . not-better about the way she looked.  I wanted to tell her that she looked pretty, but she didn’t.  And I couldn’t.

  I think I said, “That really looks like it’s your real hair.”  I remember thinking it, but I don’t know if it came out of my mouth.  I was too surprised and puzzled.

  And that’s when it got really weird.

  She said to us girls, “All right, [friend's name], I’m going to call your father now.  You girls hush up so I can talk to him.”

  She called her husband, my friend’s step-father, and she underwent yet another shocking transformation.

  Her voice, which had been energetic and sparkling and conspiratorial, suddenly became cloudy, unfocused, and uncertain.  “Bill?  Did you just try to call here?”

  A short pause, then a yawn, and, “Oh.  The phone just rang, but then it hung up.  Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Another pause, a sleepy sort of sniff, and then, “Okay, well, I’m just going to go back to sleep here.  I may turn the phone off if it does that again.  You be safe.”

  And then she turned the ringer off of her phone.

  I have no idea how wide my ten-year-old eyes were at this point, but I hope my kids’ eyes never have reason to get quite that wide.

  She turned to us and explained that she was going Out (I had no idea where that was, but I was a little nervous) because she really needed to Have A Good Time, and that we should just go to my friend’s room and stay there, and that we should go to sleep pretty soon.  She would be back after we went to sleep, she promised.

  I don’t remember the rest of the evening, nor the next morning.  (Thank God, nothing memorable happened.  I don’t know what two ten-year-olds and a toddler would have done if it had.)

  I do remember being stunned, utterly stunned, when she left.

  It was completely outside of my experience that a mother would leave her children alone at night to go party.  I had never seen my mother do anything that had even a whiff of naughtiness about it, and I’d certainly never seen her lie to my father to get away with it.  I remember marveling at what a simple, effective plan my friend’s mother had concocted.

  That was the first time my little ten-year-old brain began to connect actions with character.  The thought wasn’t fully formed, but it was there, trying to get itself thunk.  “How did she get so good at being sneaky?”

  Because it had all the markers of being a practice of long standing, although I couldn’t have put it that way at the time.  She had thought several moves ahead, anticipated reactions and complications, made contingency plans.  But, more shockingly, she had done it in full view of her daughter and her daughter’s friend, without worrying about its effect on them.  (I do remember trying to think that thought, too.  “Are we supposed to know about this?”)  It was something that did not require concealment, whether that was because it was routine enough or acceptable enough I could not say.

  I have since learned, of course, that some mothers do unspeakably wrong things to their children, whether out of ignorance or pain or illness or, yes, even malice.  I’ve since learned that some mothers don’t have the emotional or mental or financial resources to care for their children the way my parents cared for me.

  And, all things considered, this one wasn’t terribly bad.  It was genuinely dangerous, but we did not suffer any material harm.  It was just so very alien to my own childhood–one dominated by stable, loving, involved, sane parents–that it stood out as a unique experience.

  But based on my wee, tiny intersection with dysfunctional families, I’m totally okay with saying this:

  Sometimes parents get it wrong.  Really wrong. 

  And sometimes when you see it happening, you can be really, genuinely certain that there is a pervasive pattern of getting-it-wrong that might be reasonable to associate with the erring parent’s character.

  Of course, one incident doesn’t a pattern make, and one should always interpret even patterns with humility.  I don’t see everything correctly, and what seems obvious to me might nonetheless conceal a vastly different truth than the conclusion I draw.

  But sometimes you really do get a sample size that is sufficiently large to allow you to connect actions with character.  Sometimes you can justly move from “She lied” to “She’s a liar.”  From “I can’t imagine doing that to my child” to “There’s something wrong with her parenting.”

  My friend’s mother did something she ought not to have done for the sake of a pleasure she could have forgone.  This was bad.  She was wrong to have left us the way she did.  And she was wrong to teach her daughter that marriage did not require fidelity and honesty.

  I imagined my friend warning me against making unwarranted judgments without knowing all the facts, and superimposed on his warning came my son’s voice, jokingly repeating the catchphrase of his generation: “Don’t judge me!”

  My equally flippant rebuttal: I’m not judging you.  I’m just watching your behavior and drawing logical conclusions about your character.

  What I really fear is that my friend’s ostensible sensitivity to judgmentalism is actually a denial of the possibility of wrong-doing, and that this ostensible sensitivity has so cemented itself in our moral discourse that we have lost the ability to judge rightly the wrongs we ourselves do.

  I fear that we refrain from judging others not in obedience to a higher calling but to a lower one.  Judge not, lest ye be judged: you might want to do the same yourself, some day, and you don’t want someone holding you to account, now, do you?

  Yeah.  I’m judging you.  And if I ever leave my children at home alone to go out carousing all night?  You can judge me, too.  Please judge me.  Tell me so.  My soul depends on it.

  • 2:23 pm
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