The plank...

There's a passage in the bible that discusses taking care of your own issues before getting up all over other people. It's in Matthew 7:3-5. It's familiar to parochial school kids, Sunday school grads (and dropouts), churchgoers, churchhaters and pretty much every kid/grown up who wanted to give an end-all reason some sibling/parent/significant other/friend/frienemy should mind his or her own business. I'm not about to go into the true theological thoughts on the depth of this biblical statement against hipocrisy, but I am going to tell you that's sure what I was thinking this morning...

But about myself, not someone else.

The verse basically says, 'you see a splinter in your friend's eye and you want to get it out for him, but you need to check yourself first because you're sporting a plank' and, hey, that might just affect your own eyesight.

So, back to this morning...or perhaps back to a couple of months ago when I started mining my mom's attic for some of my clothes. I pulled out a bunch of my old clothes - my 'old' clothes that are pretty and voluminous in the amount available and sometimes expensive and that scream SINGLE! FUN! GREAT JOB! 

One of the selections I gingerly selected to remove from its protective plastic and begin wearing was a gorgeous pearl-gray Lewis Cho skirt made of so many layers of translucent silk chiffon. I cautioned Jacob as I carefully placed it, buffeted by tshirts, in the suitcase - that he must MUST be careful. Those layers get away from you, I said. It's silk. I love it, I said. It cost a half month's rent on our apartment, I said. Be careful.

So when I squared my shoulders and asked him, yesterday, if he remembered when I told him about that skirt, he looked at me - terrified - and said, 'Yes. I was careful. I didn't do anything. What did I do?'

And do you know why I love that man? Because when I told him I'd zipped it up in the suitcase (all by myself, in a rush, not being careful, not watching the layers) his first response was to ask if it was ok, not to be relieved that it wasn't him and, mercifully, not even to laugh at me (I totally deserved it).

You'll be happy to know that, after a good half an hour, I managed to extricate my skirt from the suitcase zipper - and they both came out no worse for the wear unlike, perhaps for the better, my attitude, which was better for the adjustment.