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Be Merciful!

Be Merciful!

Last updated on: August 23, 2016 at 8:58 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Be Merciful! 2016-08-23T20:58:35-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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It is strange, how becoming a grown-up and a mother changes your perspective.

When I was a little girl, I liked The Tale of Peter Rabbit. We had a videocassette of a woman with an extremely affected English accent reading it aloud, to a montage of original illustrations, and I enjoyed it. My heart went up into my throat every time I watched Peter come round the corner and encounter Mr. McGregor. I hated Mr. McGregor; I thought he was a sadist. I shuddered when I thought of Peter’s poor father being “Put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor,” though I didn’t understand what that meant. I had the mental image of Mrs. McGregor seeing a rabbit racing through her kitchen, scooping him up by the ears and smashing him like a blackjack into a fresh hot pie on the counter, spraying berries and piecrust hither and yon. Discovering the hard truths that people eat rabbits, and that pie can be a savory dish, floored me. I thought that Mrs. McGregor, too, was a sadist.

As a grown-up with a garden of my own, however, I find myself wondering what rabbit pie tastes like, and if you can substitute groundhog.

And that’s nothing compared to the turnaround I’ve had with The Sound of Music. When I was in preschool I loved The Sound of Music. I loved everything about it. I liked to put on a long frumpy skirt and act it out, making sudden dramatic entrances into rooms belting out “The Hills Are Alive” with those random vocalizations the Von Trapp children supplied. I was terrified of Captain Von Trapp. I thought he was every bit as evil as Mr. McGregor and was downright disappointed when he fell in love and changed his grumpy ways without anything terrible happening to him.

I have come to see the film in a different light.

Now that I’m a mother myself, I’m just not so hard on Captain Von Trapp.

Honestly, now. Let’s say that you were a grieving widower who wanted to hire a governess for your seven children while they were home on summer vacation. Let’s say you were an orderly type who liked to keep everything in ship shape. Let’s say your children responded very well to whistles but were hellion brats whenever you left the room; the last governess stayed with you for only two hours because of their behavioral issues. You had reason to believe your eldest daughter was cavorting in the gazebo with an effeminate Nazi sympathizer, too. So you went to the local cloister and arranged to borrow a postulant from Mother Superior for the summer. And Mother Superior sent you… Fraulein Maria. An absolute scatterbrain ditz who can’t walk into a room without something awkward happening. How would you feel?

Now let’s say that, after hiring the scatterbrain anyway, you inform her that you’re strict about bedtimes. Next thing you know, all of your children are dancing around the governess’s bedroom past their bedtime in their nightgowns singing at the top of their lungs and hitting each other with pillows. And after you’ve restored order, Fraulein Maria transparently lies to you about your teenage daughter’s latest tryst with the Nazi sympathizer. You try to be businesslike but kind about the whole thing; you even give her three bolts of fabric to make herself some dresses and you don’t take it out of her paycheck.

Next thing you know, you come back from your vacation to find that Fraulein Maria has made the children ugly dirndls and lederhosen out of the ugly disused drapes, which are far too thick for summer wear; she claims they’re “play clothes” even though they look way harder to play in than the darling matching sailor dresses and suits you had made for them. Not to mention, Fraulein Maria is rowing them down the river in front of your house in an unsafe boat that capsizes, nearly drowning everyone onboard and embarrassing you in front of your wealthy girlfriend.

I, too, would try to send Fraulein Maria back to the Abbey, and I wouldn’t have a change of heart just because she taught my children to sing harmony. Particularly when the children flat out told her that the sound of singing children triggered my grief, but she went ahead and taught them to sing anyway.

Poor Captain Von Trapp.

All kidding aside, I think it’s a very important part of growing up to be able to empathize with the person in the wrong, and with the person who’s being portrayed as being in the wrong. No matter how the story’s being told, we ought to step back enough to consider whether the person held up to us as the mistaken one actually is. And even after we’ve determined, using our reason, that someone is wrong, we shouldn’t forget empathy. Just imagine how often you must be in the wrong, on any given day; imagine how many times people would compare you to Mr. McGregor or pre-falling-in-love Captain Von Trapp and be right.

Imagine all the times you bounce through life, thinking of yourself as the hero of your own story, not considering that you might become the villain in someone else’s. In traffic, on the bus, dealing with your family, dealing with store clerks and people in line– all the times you might have been tempted to think of other people as supporting cast or antagonists.

Everyone is important. Everyone is God’s favorite. Each one of us will one day do something horrible and become an antagonist for our neighbor.

Be merciful, as our Father is merciful. Try to think the best of your brother. Even if you should find yourself being sent back to the abbey or put into a pie, be merciful. Only God knows who the bad guy is.

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