apologia pro vita sua & apology

It’s probably a good idea for most of us, Jewish or not, to apologize as we go. Step on a foot by accident, sorry. Let the door slam on someone because you’re lost in important thought, sorry. Forget a birthday, really very sorry. Drop your roommate out the window of a thirteenth-floor apartment—.

Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are supposed to contemplate the year in the context of those they’ve wronged. Then, after all our apologies have been made, we repent, which means we eat a gigantic meal with our families, and then we don't eat until we do it again the next night. My Israeli friend, Essie, was not the first to describe every Jewish holiday as, “They tried to kill us, we overcame, let’s eat.” Repentance and forgiveness and guilt and spirituality and God are all about the food.

I’m not sure the Old Testament clarified whether these apologies must be made in person or whether they could be written in long-hand, typed, issued via phone, sent by e-mail, or spoken into a microphone connected to Skype; I imagine they all count.

During this week, I’ve begun thinking of the people I might have offended over the course of this year—a husband who works hard and does laundry only to be left a pile of crumbs to wipe up on the kitchen counter; a daughter who has taken the brunt of her mother’s outdoor voice; a mother who sometimes hears of too many ailments and worries; a sister who also hears the outdoor voice; dogs who don’t get as much affection as they deserve. If I’m any kind of human, I take care of those hurts, big and little, as I go.

But the others? I’m over that. In slightly more than a week, I’ll be forty-four years old. If I’ve wronged you, you probably deserved it. There’s the lady I called a bitch because she is a bitch. There’s the finger I gave to the dude who cut me off. There’s the term motherfucker that I use to describe certain persons residing in the area of a certain house in Washington, DC on a certain street named after a neighboring state. Sometimes righting what’s wrong can be perceived as wrong, just on the basis of the language used. Well, fuck that.

I am a practicing agnostic Jew. I enjoy the traditions with my family. I share, via storytelling, all the history I know with all the children I know so that they will grow up with some understanding and tolerance, even if they get nothing of that from their own parents. But my own notion of god is more like something that has imbued Mother Nature or a sycamore tree with some ineffable life-ness. I like that the universe has mysteries. My world isn’t empty because I can’t assign an answer to them. It’s those mysteries that allow me to imagine.

Still, I don’t get off without the annual apology, this one typed and published in the blogosphere. I imagine God might like that it’s reaching out to people as far away as Thailand and London and Hawaii, as close as Cleveland and Lansing and DC (not them, though).

So to all of those I’ve cut off in the car because I was listening to Bob real loud and groovin’, to all of those at whom I’ve rolled my eyes because you were too freakin’ slow walking up the stairs or out the door or getting a cart at the store, I’m sorry.

And I am sorry that I don’t treat myself better, especially in my thoughts. And I’m sorry that some of my ancestors perfected the car bomb and used it first in dirty warfare. And I’m sorry that people like Mel Gibson get away with it every day. And I’m sorry that my daughter doesn’t want to wear a dress even for my birthday, that my husband has to work when he’d much rather see the world, that my father is seventy and hasn’t retired, that my mother has become anxious and conservative—almost at the same time. I’m sorry that I never learned to play guitar, that I like The People's Court so much that I would avoid going anywhere until after it. I'm sorry that I take too many pictures that aren’t artful, that I watch the birds and play with the navel, that I squint and don’t smile enough, that I long for something else far too often when what I have is enough to feed the world.

I’m sorry that my apology is too long when so many other things deserve attention more. And I’m sorry I have not given you more of my attention.

And I’m sorry that I have had to say I’m sorry so often this year and so often this essay.

At almost forty-four, I’m not as over “sorry” as I thought.