In Nadja Spiegelman‘s memoir, I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This, she recounts a curious episode from her youth. (SorryWatch is focusing on apology here and will leave aside our admiration for the work of the writer’s parents, Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman.)

In high school Spiegelman had issues with her weight, and more particularly with her mother’s issues about Spiegelman’s weight. Her mother would buy snacks that Spiegelman’s brother was allowed to eat and Spiegelman was not. She’d announce she was hiding the snacks from Spiegelman. “They’re not for you, You don’t need them. Okay?”

“Okay,” the sullen Spiegelman said. Wanting only for the conversation to stop. The ‘hiding’ was a formality. Spiegelman knew perfectly well what cupboard they were in. (Cookies, chips, jerky, fruit leather.)

But the snacks were vanishing, with wrappers left around that announced their consumption. Her mother told her to quit taking them. Spiegelman said she didn’t take them. They fought about it for weeks. Spiegelman was grounded. Snack wrappers kept turning up. Her enraged, disgusted mother demanded she stop lying. Spiegelman said she wasn’t lying. Yelling happened. Spiegelman slapped her mother and was sent straight to therapy. The therapist and Spiegelman’s parents told her that apparently she was sleep-eating. She tried and tried to remember doing this, couldn’t, yet “began to believe” it was true. It was terrifying.

One night she slept over at a friend’s. Snacks were available, not an issue. When she got home, there was an empty potato chip bag on the floor in her room. She couldn’t have “sleep-eaten” them because she’d slept elsewhere. She took it to her mother. “I didn’t do this,” she said. “Oh. Okay,” said her mother.

The subject was dropped, which is mysterious to me, but months later there was a family council at which her parents forced her brother to admit that he’d been setting her up with the wrappers. Framing her. They made him apologize to her. Why he’d done this isn’t explained.

A few years later, when Spiegelman was in college, it occurred to her that she wanted an apology from her mother. She called and asked for that.

Her mother defended herself, saying she couldn’t have guessed what was actually happening. “It was inconceivable.” Spiegelman said she understood. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you hurt me. You made me think I was going crazy. And when you hurt someone, you apologize.”

Her mother continued defensive. She couldn’t have known! “Even you didn’t know!”

“But you’re my mother,” Spiegelman said. She writes that they argued for two hours, when her mother suddenly. Got it.

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right. I’m your mother. Oh my baby, I’m so sorry.”

(Now switching from the editorial we to Sumac.) I read this with a sense of recognition. A while back my daughter – call her Sukey – revealed a grievance against me. At one point her younger brother – call him Biff – had improvised a lyrical variation on Weezer’s “Undone – The Sweater Song.”

Instead of singing the (madly catchy) lyric “If you want to destroy my sweater/Hold this thread as I walk away…” he sang “If you want to destroy my Sukey/Go ahead, her life is pukey…”

I laughed.

But my laugh rankled Sukey. Later she told me I hurt her feelings. I shouldn’t have laughed, I should have stood up for her.

I defended myself. I didn’t mean anything by it, I didn’t think her life is pukey! I wasn’t unfair – I would have responded the exact same way if it was a friend.

“But you’re my mother,” she said.

I went on defending myself. I didn’t convince her.

Later I thought better of it. I started from a grumbly “How unfair to me,” but the more I thought about the ‘you’re-my-mother’ argument, the more I saw she was right. A sibling’s teasing is routine. But a parent should never gang up on you.

(I’m still a little indignant about the time my own mother accused me – lightheartedly! – of squatting in my own filth. I would be madder if it didn’t make me laugh every time I think of it.)

I apologized to Sukey, and told her that I’d realized she was right – I’m her mother, and therefore I don’t and shouldn’t treat her precisely as I would a friend.

She accepted my apology. She was glad I’d figured it out. Later, when it occurred to me to liken this incident to the Spiegelman story, neither of us could remember exactly what it was about. We both remembered that she reproached me, that I refused to accept blame, and that later I saw her point and apologized. But for a long time neither of us could remember what I had done. (The one who finally remembered was me, when the song wandered through my mind.)

The fact that we had a hard time remembering what it was about is a sign, I believe, that the apology took the sting out of the memory.

Success! Case closed.