Committed a sin yesterday

    

    Committed a sin yesterday, in the hallway, at noon  I roared at my son, I grabbed him by the shirt collar, I frightened him so badly that he cowered and wept, and when he turned to run I grabbed him by the arm so roughly that he flinched, and it was that flicker of fear and pain across his face, the bright eager holy riveting face I have loved for ten years, that stopped me then and haunts me this morning; for I am the father of his fear, I sent it snarling into his heart and I can never get it out now, which torments me.
     Yes, he was picking on his brother, and yes, he had picked on his brother all morning, and yes, this was the culmination of many edgy incidents already, and no, he hadn't paid the slightest attention to warnings and remonstrations and fulminations and yes, he had been snide and supercilious all day, and yes, he had deliberately done exactly the thing he had specifically been warned not to do, for murky reasons, but still, I roared at him and grabbed him and terrified him and made him cower, and now there is a dark evil wriggle between us that makes me sit here with my hands over my face, ashamed to the bottom of my bones.
     I do not know how sins can be forgiven. I grasp the concept, I admire the genius of the idea, I suspect it to be the seed of all real peace, I savor the Tutus and Gandhis who have mad courage to live by it, but I do not understand how foul can be maid fair.  What is done cannot be undone, and my moment of rage in the hallway is an indelible scar on his heart and mine, and while my heart is a ragged old bag after nearly half a century of slings and strings, his is still new, eager, open, suggestible, innocent; for he has committed only the small sins of a child, the halting first lies, the failed test paper hidden in the closet, the window broken in petulance, the stolen candy bar, the silent witness as a classmate is bullied, the insults flung like bitter knives.
     Whereas I am a man, and have had many lies squirming in my mouth, and have committed calumny, and have evaded the mad and the ragged in the street, ignored the stinking Christ, his rotten teeth, his cloak of soggy newspaper, his voice of broken glass.

-An excerpt from "A Sin,"
     by Brian Doyle (2005)