Snow and Forgiveness

This past weekend I went cross-country skiing near Lake Tahoe with Tom and two friends of ours. Our friends do a lot of skiing and invited us along on this trip and made all the arrangements. I very nearly didn’t go because, thanks to Tara Brach’s wonderful book Radical Acceptance, I’m more in my body than I ever have been, which is great—it’s kind of tickly in here sometimes in a pleasant way—but also makes me feel more than before, on top of which I was premenstrual, which always involves a week of being really prone to losing my temper in a big way or, once in a while, a week of black despair. This particular installment featured mainly black despair, during which I heard from friends a couple of stories that in the past would have made me say, “My god, that’s terrible,” and I would have meant it, but last week they made me really terribly sad.

Tom and I went on a weekend trip with these friends (and they are beloved friends) a few years ago and I found it difficult. I think it probably boiled down to anxiety caused by the loss of control that is inherent in doing things in a group. (Of course, to be alive is to do almost everything in a group, in one way or another.) So I had a bit of trepidation about this trip and vowed not to contend over small things. (Years ago, I drove from San Francisco to San Diego with a friend and we fought so horribly about the window and the radio, and so forth, that one of us flew home as soon as we got to San Diego. Yes, that was me.)

The day before we left for skiing, it turned out we all didn’t have the same idea about what time we were going to depart, and thus I found myself startled and contending after all. I was all ready not to fight about the window, but hadn’t psychologically prepared not to fight about the departure time.

By Friday morning, I had decided it would be a bad idea to undertake this trip. The potential for conflict was too great. In the almost end, I packed not a single item and let my friends drive off without me. In the actual end, I frantically found the driver’s cell phone number and called to say, “I changed my mind.” These are good friends. They came back and got me and didn’t act like I had wrecked their morning and waited while I packed in a frenzy.

We stayed in a lodge near Sugar Bowl in what were actually the fancy rooms—bare plywood crates so tiny that one’s shoulder was almost touching the wall on one side while one’s other shoulder was almost touching the upper bunk bed. One other thing about being more in my body is that it’s kind of claustrophobia-inducing at times: I’m trapped in this thing that is heading inevitably for the grave, or, as Yeats correctly said, fastened to a dying animal. A dying animal in a small plywood box.

The next day, our friends went off on an adventure and Tom and I received a lesson from a miracle worker of a skiing instructor who, with great enthusiasm and good cheer, showed us how to put on our skis, take them off, stride through the snow, use double poles, climb a hill, and one or two ways to slow down when descending. In the afternoon, a more advanced skier generously offered to take me and Tom out on the trails, which was really great.

The feared conflict did also materialize, between the two people, one from each couple, who most like to be in charge, one of them of course being me.

I kept having to deal, also, with little wavelets of panic as I lay at night trapped in my body, trapped in the little room, trapped in the rustic wooden firetrap of a lodge. And I felt sad about my cat, who was looking particularly thin and delicate when I left. She is old and there is far less time left with her than there has already been.

At this point, I have dealt with a good deal of nighttime panic and know to notice, for starters, that whatever I’m worried about is in the future, that everything is OK right now.

As for my cat, a la Tara Brach, I must say “yes” to the fact of my sadness. Yes, I am sad when I think about saying goodbye to my cat. Yes, my cat is old. I can notice where I physically feel that and attend to it with care; I can notice how the sensations evolve, as they will.

The best thing that happened this weekend was what I realized about forgiveness, which is largely a foreign concept in my family. If you anger a member of my family, prepare to lose the relationship permanently. On my refrigerator is a photo of my beloved grandmother next to a photo of my adored little second cousin, the former being the great-grandmother of the latter. But they never laid eyes on each other while my grandmother was alive, due to a family feud. While I consciously aspire not to behave that way, my first impulse when difficulty arises in a relationship is often to think, “Forget this. This is a bad person. I never want to see him/her again.”

My long-suffering mental health professional, fortunately, never thinks that’s a good idea. She says, “Well, now. You’ve known this person for a long time. Is there anything you would miss about this friendship?” She does not say, “You don’t need this. Slam the door and don’t look back.” She always proves to be right and I’ve learned to go through that mental process before I make any rash announcements.

But this weekend I got viscerally how a hard moment in a friendship doesn’t mean the friendship is bad. If anything, maybe it means it’s an extra-good friendship, that it can stand the strain of a hard moment or hard hour or day, that there is enough mercy to get through such a thing. All things pass, certainly including irritation. But perhaps the real bit of grace is forgiveness, being able to say internally, “Yes, I wanted to wring your neck and that’s OK. This relationship means a lot to me. There are a lot of things about you I really think are great. Whatever you did that pushed my buttons, I forgive it.”