Something to Hide – Part 2
My sister and I had been thieves in the summer of 1970. (Read Part 1 here) After my sister being caught and my confession that I did it too, our mother made us wait up for our dad to get home from work, around 11:30 pm, so we could tell him ourselves. I’d had a knot in my stomach all evening in anticipation of the outcome. Our father wasn’t too keen on things like lying and stealing.
The time drew closer. The knot tightened.
He walked through the door. The knot tightened some more.
I hung my head knowing that we finally had to fess up.
He said, well more like yelled, that he ought to send us to Father Baker’s church to scrub the floors with a toothbrush. The picture above is part of the inside of Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Buffalo, New York. I believe this is where he meant. I didn’t dare entertain the thought that it wasn’t a real possibility for a punishment.
But worse than that were the last words he said. I don’t remember much more than the Father Baker’s church threat and these words: “I’m ashamed of you.”
Those words cut deeper than any punishment we could have received, including the toothbrush torture.
I went to bed that night in shame. I felt unlovable. I was ok with being punished–in fact I expected that, almost welcomed it–but I wasn’t prepared to be pushed outside the boundaries of my father’s trust and good graces.
That really hurt.
The other fallout was not as bad as you’d expect. We had to gather up all the things we stole and return them to the stores we stole them from. None of them would take the merchandise back. Instead, we had to pay for it with our own money.
When we got to W.T. Grants, they called the police. A policeman, who turned out to be my 7th grade teacher’s husband (did Grant’s call the police or did my mother arrange that with their help?) and he told us about all the bad things that could come from this.
He told us this was being put on a secret record and if we ever got in trouble again, it would not be secret anymore. I doubted that, but I wasn’t about to call him on it.
When we finally got home, I looked at all the stuff I had stolen. I thought about how much it had delighted me when I got it. Then I threw it all in the trash.
My sister and I, along with giving up our allowance of fifty cents a week and any money we earned until our debt was paid, had to weed all the gardens in the yard for the rest of the summer.
Past that summer, we never really talked about it again. I have no recollection of talking about it with any of the other participants in our little gang of thieves either. To this day I have no idea what their consequences were or how it affected their lives.
When I finally had the courage to reveal my secret to a new friend in another state that would never have contact with anybody I knew in my day to day life, he laughed at me. He was like, “Is that all you got? The way you were acting, I thought you’d killed someone.”
My sister and I just talked about it recently. I called her to see if she minded if I put this out there. She remembered some details that I had no memory of and I remembered details she didn’t remember. We had a good laugh about it. We tried to remember how it started, why we did it. I think we were just bored that summer, idle hands and all that.
It took a lot of hard work and time to earn my father’s trust back, but eventually, I did. We had a wonderful relationship, and I could always turn to him for help when I had a problem or as a sounding board if that’s what I needed. We talked about things I wouldn’t talk about with anyone else.
I told him once, several years before he died, how much I appreciated the way he reacted to our thievery, for not glossing over it and trying to make us feel ok about it, like it was just a part of growing up.
I told him how those four words–I’m ashamed of you–had influenced the person I became, how they made me acutely aware of how my actions affected other people. They made me realize (much later in life) that shame has its purpose and that there are things you should feel shame about. On the flip side, if someone tried to shame me into doing something I didn’t want to do, I knew when I had nothing to be ashamed of and I could easily say no.
It also gave me a litmus test for my decisions. I would think long and hard before making a decision to make sure I was doing the right thing, not the easy thing or the just-because-I-feel-like-it thing.
That whole experience, even though I never would have guessed it at the time, helped me become a better, kinder, more thoughtful person. A more forgiving person. A more principled person than I otherwise might have become.
Thank you mom and dad!
Want to share? Please leave a comment below!
If you know anyone who would enjoy this, please feel free to share!
Join our community
Subscribe to get our latest content by email.
As long as I have known you, I have never been ashamed of you.
So I’m glad you were shamed at a young age, because now no one will ever be ashamed of knowing you, being part of your loved circle, seeing you in public, or even……….. Being seen getting hugs from you
That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. Thanks! Sending hugs! Love you!
I’ve never been ashamed of you matter affect I always looked up to you. I worked along side of you for many years and I can’t tell you in words what that means to me, you became one of my best friends and still are to this day. Thank you so much for all the help you gave me, I could and still can talk to you about anything. I love all your visits especially when you bring me that wonderful cake but I love the visits and talking about good times and bad. I love you my dear friend.
Your friendship is one of the best things to come of my 23 years at Bud. I treasure it and I’m so glad you do too! I love you very much and I appreciate all your help and encouragement and that you like my cake! Hope to see you soon!
“It took a lot of hard work and time to earn my father’s trust back …” Carol, you know he trusted you as soon as he saw your reaction that first night. But he still needed to see the ‘teachable moment’ thru, even tho we didn’t know that term back then.
Being ashamed (or saying that one is) is an order of mag worse than being “disappointed” in someone. Sort of mortal vs venial.
Your Dad was fair and loving, and I’ll bet it hurt him to use the word “ashamed,” but he knew it would rectify your criminal ways better than if he’d told you girls will be girls.
Lesson learned. I know I’ve been told I should be ashamed of myself on occasion, and that when Mom or Dad said it I knew it was true. blyb
Jim, very true. Looking back, I don’t think it took as long as I thought it did (to get back my dad’s trust)…it probably just seemed like an eternity. One of the greatest gifts in my life though, was the relationship we had as adults. I’d have wanted to be friends with him even if he weren’t my dad!
Your parents were incredible people! So loving, kind, caring & giving. And obviously a wonderful job of parenting.
Peggy! Hi, how are you? Awesome to see you here! It always warms my heart to know that so many people have good memories of mom and dad. I miss them a lot. I hope you and your family are doing well.
What a lovely story of repentance and forgiveness. There will always be consequences but love endures. You are a gifted writer and have a kind heart. I miss you my friend.
Thank you Betty. I’ve been holding that in for 48 years! It feels good to get it out. Thank God for love and consequences, and for you my friend!
I agree that mom and dad’s reaction was the best thing they could have done for us. Like you, I rarely talked about it, and I too still feel the sting of those 4 words. But there was one thing that hurt worse than those words for me. Every night I would lay awake waiting for dad to get home from work, hoping that this night would be the night that he came in to kiss us and bless us good night as he always had in the past. Each night he’d hesitate at the bedroom door but did not come in, and I would cry myself to sleep. It seemed like a life time before he finally came in again. As he kissed us and blessed us I pretended I was asleep. I guess I couldn’t face him. But again that night I cried myself to sleep. But it was because I was so relieved, so happy that my dad loved me again.
On the other hand, unlike you, the threat of being sent to Father Baker’s became a bit of a constant in my life. Like I mentioned last week, I was often in the wrong place at the wrong time which usually ended with me as the scape-goat. Don’t get me wrong, I was definitely a hand full. Which was probably why it was easy to assume I was guilty. So I continued on, throwing caution to the wind, figuring I was going to get grounded anyway, I might as well have some fun.
It’s strange but true that even within the same family unit we are all so different; the lessons we each take away from the same event, our reactions to the things life throws in our path, the things we each remember, as well as those we forget. These things are all internalized differently depending on our personality and our past experiences. Where you seemed to come through the incident with a stronger sense of who you were and where your boundaries were, I was not so lucky. I have always felt the pressure of having to prove I was a good person. And still I often feel like I don’t deserve the good things that come my way in life.
Over the years though, I have come to realize that the pressure to prove myself was not to prove it to others, it was to prove it to myself. And all those years I felt the world looking at me as if I didn’t measure up, it was really my own eyes looking inward and judging myself. And I, myself, turned what I saw into what I thought others saw.
And now, after bearing my soul just a bit more than I originally intended, I’ll close with this little adage; If I knew then what I know now…
Wow! An amazing revelation! I’m so glad you can see that so clearly. Now’s the time to tell yourself that you’re just fine and wonderful as you are. If God can love us, imperfect as we are, who are we to say that we’re unworthy? If you knew then what you know now, you may have had a different life. The thing is though, today you know what you know now. What is something positive you can do with that knowledge to improve your life?
I found this after I sent my last reply. Anyone struggling with something like what we went through might find this helpful. http://www.nicabm.com/shame/shame-infographics/
That’s some good information. Personally, I feel there should be two types of shame too. One constructive and one destructive. I believe I had the constructive shame. It doesn’t say I’m an unworthy person, it says I did a bad thing. I felt guilt because you got in trouble, but shame for the actual incident. I think the destructive shame is what they described on the sheet. When someone feels the shame of unworthiness (especially a child), I think it’s generally because of something that happened to them or things they’ve heard others say about them (whether understood or misunderstood) not something they did. What do you think?
I think you touched on something there. I’m going to have to think on that a bit. I have to mull things over for awhile to get my brain wrapped around it before I continue. But I like what you’re saying.