Spence News
Three Hard Words
Volume VII, Number 5
When I was in high school, I had a morning ritual with my mother, which I now look back upon with both a heart-stopping realization of her wisdom and a palpable regret of never having shared with her my admiration. Each morning, or at least it seems so to me, looking back now, I would find some reason to be angry with her and took every opportunity to let her know that my coiled, adolescent angst, my big irritable self, was completely of her doing. Then, as planned, I would leave for school dramatically silent or huffily snorting, turning my head back and forth in disbelief. Was there ever such a trial as mine? Was there ever such a mother?
By noon, I would feel the regret, perhaps recognizing, even if just a little, that Prospero was right: “this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” The morning exorcism was necessary for me in ways that I did not then fully understand, and it was my mother who stood as victim, not me. I would find a phone booth at school, call my mother and barely spit out the words, “I am sorry.” But the script didn’t end there. The tacit understanding I demanded when I called was that my mother could only receive the apology. She was never allowed to engage: that would put me right back at the breakfast table rage where it all started. My mother knew this play, and she allowed me the parts of director, playwright and lead, day after day.
It’s hard to say, “I am sorry,” no matter the context, no matter the age. It’s right at the heart of confronting our common limitations as humans, and who really wants to be wrong, ever? But the relationship between parent and child, and I might add, especially between mother and daughter, is couched in that land of unconditional love in which our fast-growing charges are seeking to understand self as separate from the very loved ones who are helping them to shape it. Our children may not even realize that they’re practicing the separation to come. They may not even know that this distancing is part of the dance, but they do know that they want the safety of a return to the fold, to the family. Every time I called my mom to say I was sorry, I was relinquishing my righteousness: hard to do, but extraordinarily important. That’s why she was never really allowed to talk about it with me.
Last fall, at our All-School Assembly, we had the honor of welcoming Rabbi Amy Ehrlich from Temple Emanu-El who spoke eloquently about the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, bookends to a time of personal reflection and atonement. At the center of her talk was the importance of saying you are sorry: again, those three simple words holding the gift of grace and connection and those three simple words, which are sometimes the hardest to utter. In her effort to share with us the powerful relationship among making amends, fresh beginnings and personal growth, Rabbi Ehrlich also told us that we really didn’t have to wait for any designated time to say we are sorry.
This back-and-forth ritual is the stuff of life, and it happens all the time, especially with children and parents. Children are going to break the relationship in small parts and in small ways to develop a self that is separate from their parents, and when this happens there will be both conflict and reunion, over and over again. I think about this tension with a smile when I remember a story of my then 5-year-old son who once, when playing in my office, typed out a note to me that read, “I’m sorry.” When he gave it to me, many times folded and labeled with those wobbly, outsized letters, “Mom,” I asked him what he was sorry for. He said with a nod of his little head, “just in case.” Perhaps he was already thinking ahead.
By noon, I would feel the regret, perhaps recognizing, even if just a little, that Prospero was right: “this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” The morning exorcism was necessary for me in ways that I did not then fully understand, and it was my mother who stood as victim, not me. I would find a phone booth at school, call my mother and barely spit out the words, “I am sorry.” But the script didn’t end there. The tacit understanding I demanded when I called was that my mother could only receive the apology. She was never allowed to engage: that would put me right back at the breakfast table rage where it all started. My mother knew this play, and she allowed me the parts of director, playwright and lead, day after day.
It’s hard to say, “I am sorry,” no matter the context, no matter the age. It’s right at the heart of confronting our common limitations as humans, and who really wants to be wrong, ever? But the relationship between parent and child, and I might add, especially between mother and daughter, is couched in that land of unconditional love in which our fast-growing charges are seeking to understand self as separate from the very loved ones who are helping them to shape it. Our children may not even realize that they’re practicing the separation to come. They may not even know that this distancing is part of the dance, but they do know that they want the safety of a return to the fold, to the family. Every time I called my mom to say I was sorry, I was relinquishing my righteousness: hard to do, but extraordinarily important. That’s why she was never really allowed to talk about it with me.
Last fall, at our All-School Assembly, we had the honor of welcoming Rabbi Amy Ehrlich from Temple Emanu-El who spoke eloquently about the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, bookends to a time of personal reflection and atonement. At the center of her talk was the importance of saying you are sorry: again, those three simple words holding the gift of grace and connection and those three simple words, which are sometimes the hardest to utter. In her effort to share with us the powerful relationship among making amends, fresh beginnings and personal growth, Rabbi Ehrlich also told us that we really didn’t have to wait for any designated time to say we are sorry.
This back-and-forth ritual is the stuff of life, and it happens all the time, especially with children and parents. Children are going to break the relationship in small parts and in small ways to develop a self that is separate from their parents, and when this happens there will be both conflict and reunion, over and over again. I think about this tension with a smile when I remember a story of my then 5-year-old son who once, when playing in my office, typed out a note to me that read, “I’m sorry.” When he gave it to me, many times folded and labeled with those wobbly, outsized letters, “Mom,” I asked him what he was sorry for. He said with a nod of his little head, “just in case.” Perhaps he was already thinking ahead.
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212-289-5940
© 2025 Spence School
