I have an unquenchable thirst for stories about broken people. There is the dynamic teacher whose vibrancy in the classroom is matched by his devotion at home for a son who will never walk or speak. I have gone back several times to watch the marriage of Ian and Larissa. He suffered severe head trauma in an accident, but they still find gratitude enough to sustain them. 

 

The other night John and I came home from a sweet evening church service where we had the good fortune to provide music. We enjoy singing together, and for twenty minutes of pre-, post- and interludes we sang the lyrics we have spun together, beginning with the one born before we fell in love. Our hearts were buoyant as we walked in the door, and saw three kids who should have been asleep still awake. John told Benjamin to get off the computer while I nudged the twins to bed. But Ben had other ideas and erupted into a kicking, biting hissy fit. John was hard pressed to keep both of them out of harm's way, and his tether was stretched to stay this side of incensed. After a slew of hurled objects and slammed doors, Ben was corralled, fuming, in his room. I spent the next half hour across the hall composing dire consequences for him. 

 

About one o'clock my door banged open. 

 

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." It was all he could think to say. I sent him back to bed.

 

Two hours later he walked in again.

 

"I'm sorry." My shell cracked slightly, and I answered more softly. 

 

"Thank you for saying so."

 

When the sun came up he offered it again as if there had been a continual string of earnest apologies marching through his brain for the last nine hours. "I'm sorry." I made him a list of penance chores, much shorter than the one I had scripted the night before. He performed them immediately, even though he had a plate of hot breakfast waiting for him. I said that he could do them after he ate but he would not be distracted. 

 

It would have been simpler to arrive home to a quiet house, tip toeing to each room to kiss hair tossed faces. But the service John and I had sung for was about the Last Supper, and the Lord's mercy in the face of betrayal.

 

Photo by Stephen Conroy

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