Forgiveness

It is no longer shocking to write that one hates one’s mother, advises Magazine Litteraire, meaning that it has already been done: don’t count on selling that first novel on mother-hate.

But hate seems to me such a trivial feeling. I do not hate my mother. Why should I? To hate her would be to concede victory to her: hate would amount to admitting that she managed to hurt me and that I still smarted from that hurt. The truth is that I no longer do. In fact, I rarely think about it.

But, contra popular ethics, forgiveness does not follow. Why should I forgive a crime for which no apology has ever been made? And, besides, even if one were forthcoming, why should I have to accept it? “Because she’s your mother,” says everyone. So? That logic did not weigh with her then, why should it weigh with me now?

Besides, is she really my mother? A mother is someone who shows kindness to her child. A woman who does not, is not a mother, whatever her anatomical relationship to the subject. This is why those who advise me to forgive my mother on the grounds of past anatomical events, might as well say “because she wears shoe size 36”: both arguments are equally meaningless.

Finally, is forgiveness a virtue? Christian ideologues (not a particularly forgiving lot) make a lot of it, but their forgiveness seems to be a kind of transaction: Lord, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And that’s fine if one wants to heaven, but what if one does not want Lord’s forgiveness for anything? What if one does not intend to go down on the knee or kiss anything? Every action in life has its consequences and I have always been prepared to take the consequences of my actions: it seemed to me only fair that I should. Shouldn’t everyone?

No, I don’t hate my mother, but I will not forgive her.

The Magazine Litteraire would probably see a first novel in this. But someone else will have to write it: 350 words is about the maximum I am prepared to concede to the topic.

(That’s the thing about novels, is it not: people use them to deal with problems which still bother them; problems, in other words, still unresolved. But if you have solved a problem, well, there is no need for a novel anymore, is there?)