By Jean V. Dickson
My father turned to me and said, “University - I can’t send you to university! You need to get a job so you can support your sister.”
His words slammed into my solar plexus. I stood there with my mouth open, wheezing for wind, searching for sanity. And I thought, “This must be what the brother of the prodigal son felt like.”
In that moment, I empathised with the anger of the son who stayed home. I too saw red – a river of red blood. The celebration calf slaughtered before my eyes. A reward carefully prepared for the lazy, dissolute child while I, the responsible child, got no reward. I, the good child, was supposed to work to support my sister’s sloth.
I wouldn’t have been hurt by my father’s words if my sister were five years old and needed looking after. But at 29, my elder sister was more than capable of getting a job and supporting herself. However, like the prodigal son, Gail liked spending money - as long as she didn’t have to work for that money. Gail was as likely to dive into work as a cat catapult into cold water. Even with a flock of birds on the other side of that pond, it just wouldn’t happen.
As far back as I could remember, Gail would yell for an hour instead of doing 15 minutes worth of work. Then, when I was a pre-teen and Gail in her twenties, she convinced my parents that she was ill - that she needed to spend each winter someplace warm, someplace expensive. One night, exulting in her victory, she boasted about how gullible mom and dad were, believing her when she pretended to be ill.
As much as I hated how my sister manipulated my parents into giving her the money to go away each winter, I rejoiced whenever Gail left. Because, hell on earth was only another way to say Gail was in town.
Yes, I had many good reasons to resent my sister. I hated her manipulations, her lies - the way she would try to embarrass me in front of my friends, and teachers. The way she would barge into work, refuse to leave and try to get me fired from my job. How she would take credit for my work when relatives visited. The many times she tried to make me late for important appointments.
Oh, yes, I had many good reasons to hate my sister, and I thought about them constantly. I loved to dwell on all the ways she had done me wrong. She was an itch that I just loved to scratch.
It was the poison ivy that brought me to my senses.
When I looked at the red, itchy rash on my son’s arms and legs, I didn’t know what it was. At first, I wondered whether it might be chicken pox. But then our neighbour pointed to a patch of soft green vegetation gently shaded by a cedar hedge. “That’s poison ivy. You don’t want to touch that. You don’t want to even walk through it. Because the poison will stick to your shoes and the next time you touch them, the poison will touch you right back.” He paused, then continued, “You should put up a ‘Keep off the grass’ sign - just until you get it under control.”
Maybe it was because I had just spent an angry hour arguing over the phone with Gail. But as he said these words, I suddenly realised that I had spent 30 years carefully cultivating an emotional poison ivy patch. Each time I took out Gail’s list of sins, I walked over to the edge of my poison ivy patch. Every time I stopped to dwell on a particular injustice, I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants and waded through the ivy. Each time I exulted in my superiority, it was if I had taken off all my clothes and was rolling in the ivy, rapture radiating from my face. Afterwards I would scratch my legs raw as I sat happily contemplating another way she had done me wrong.
That afternoon, I finally realized my emotional poison ivy patch was more harmful than the one outside. The only way to combat it was to apply the calamine of forgiveness.
That night, as I kissed my son’s cheek, I once again thought of the prodigal son. Brushing my son’s hair from his forehead, I understood why the father killed the fatted calf when his lost son returned home. There was no doubt in my mind that I too would kill a fatted calf for my son. And for the first time, I wondered why I ever thought the son who stayed home was justified in his anger.
That night, as I stood outside my son’s bedroom door, I put a ‘Don’t Walk on the Grass’ sign in my mind, to match the one outside in our yard.
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