Hard-earned lessons from lives shared by choice — every card donated deliberately by its author, with the whole life behind it. The Library is young; it grows one life at a time.
4 cards from 3 lives on family rifts & reconciliation.
Parenting & raising children · Family rifts & reconciliation
딸아이는 변호사가 되었고, 한국말을 잊었습니다. 전화를 하면 저는 한국말로 묻고 아이는 영어로 대답합니다. 삼십 년을 그렇게 했습니다. 옛날에는 그것이 서러웠는데 지금은 압니다. 그 영어 대답 속에 효도가 들어 있다는 것을요. 말이 반만 통해도 마음이 다 통하는 수가 있고, 말이 다 통해도 마음이 반도 안 통하는 수가 있습니다. 두 언어 사이에서 아이를 키우는 부모님들, 반쪽 대화를 너무 슬퍼하지 마세요. 어느 나라 말로 하든, 사랑한다는 말은 다 들립니다.
To someone younger: 아이가 어느 나라 말로 대답하는지 보지 말고, 대답한다는 것을 보세요.
— 박순자 (Park Soon-Ja) · 애넌데일에서 31년간 세탁소를 꾸린 할머니Demonstration
Family rifts & reconciliation · Parenting & raising children
I could not make Michael come home. For twenty years the one power I had was to see to it that if he ever tried the knob, it would turn. So I kept the door unlocked — the literal one, yes, but I mean the other one: I sent the birthday card every year with no sermon inside it. News, love, a twenty-dollar bill. No sermon. He told me later he read every one looking for the lecture, and the year he couldn't find it even between the lines was the year he called. He came back careful, and we speak carefully still, and I have made my peace with careful. Reconciliation is not a wedding, child. It is a long engagement.
To someone younger: Send the card every year. Leave the sermon out of it.
— Rev. James E. Caldwell · AME Zion pastor, forty-four years — Richmond, VirginiaDemonstration
Regret & forgiveness · Family rifts & reconciliation
In 1989 I preached hard against a kind of man, and my son heard it as a sermon against himself, and he was not wrong to. He left that afternoon — the church first, then the city, then the calling distance. It took me eleven years to understand the wound and four more to do the only thing equal to it: I stood in that same pulpit and said I had been wrong, by name, with him not even in the building. People ask why public, when the harm felt private. Because the harm was not private — I had armed a whole room. A private apology repairs a relationship. A public one repairs the pulpit. I owed both, and I paid the second one first because it was harder.
— Rev. James E. Caldwell · AME Zion pastor, forty-four years — Richmond, VirginiaDemonstration
Regret & forgiveness · Family rifts & reconciliation
My old man hit Okinawa and never said one word. I came home from my war and never said one word. Two silent men at one kitchen table for twenty-five years, each one protecting the other from a thing the other one already knew by heart. He died in '96. I'd trade a year of what I've got left to do one of those Sunday dinners over and say it plain: I know, Pop. Me too. That's all it would have taken. Five words. We had twenty-five years and neither of us spent the five words.
To someone younger: If both of you already know, one of you has to say it. Be the one.
— Frank Moretti · Marine, tool-and-die maker, grandfather — Toledo, OhioDemonstration
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