We’ve come late to The Bear on TV. I think we turned it on for a moment a couple of years ago, saw a lot of people shouting at each other and decided to give it a miss. But now we’ve just finished watching season 2 and are hooked.
Among its many joys is Jamie Lee Curtis as Donna, the main character’s off-the-rails mother. In the final episode of season 2, she has been invited to the ‘family and friends night’ of the new restaurant. Nerves are already stretched, and the prospect of Donna arriving drunk and ultra-disorderly adds an extra layer of dread.
I’m not giving anything away when I say that this extremely volatile character gave me the first line of today’s verse. I’ve wrenched the line from Donna’s context and let it play out in mine.
Verse 13: I don’t know how to say I’m sorry
I don’t know how to say I’m sorry.
The words come easy, and too much.
I'm sorry if I made you worry
when you kicked away my crutch
and sent me sprawling.1 In the water
I said sorry to the copper –
sorry that my wet arrest
made extra work.2 You may have guessed
nuns taught me acts of pure contrition 3
back when I was barely six
and what goes in at that age sticks.
To not say sorry meant perdition.
I often play the sorry card,
but say it from the heart? That’s hard.
1 An imaginary scenario.
2 A true story, see earlier blog post.
3 See here.
Me fail? I fly! 
Don’t know nothing about the bear, but really liked the poem. Never understood people who can’t say sorry when it springs so easy to my lips. Was it the nuns doing? Not sure. Confession perhaps, when one had to be sorry for made up crimes, which probably condemned one to hell.
Congratulations on your arrest. We will win! (hopefully)
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Thanks, Peter. I’m relieve though not really surprised, that I’m not the only one who says sorry easily (and often irritatingly, I’m sure). I don’t know about the nuns either, but Catholicism must be implicated in some way.
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Great poem Jonathan … not having had a Catholic education I don’t have quite the same feeling about perdition but the point about “true” apology is still well made!
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To be relatively honest, Sue, ‘perdition’ is mainly there for the rhyme, but a lot of time was spent in school focusing on the different kinds of contrition
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It’s a good word!
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“Relatively honest” Now there’s a concept to explore….
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Well spotted. I went to write ‘perfectly honest, then went ‘Hmmm!’ I picked it because of the rhyme but on the other hand there it was in my head waiting to be picked. So
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I mentioned your arrest to my brother Peter’s daughter today – she was very impressed. She’s also researching the life stories of children born to “60s radicals”. As to the poem, I’ve always thought “sorry” was one of the most perditious words in the dictionary. It means everything and nothing.
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It can mean a lot, though. I’ve just watched s later episode on The Bear, that contrasts a glib apology with one that would transform a relationship. Interesting about your niece’s research. Does she include herself among her subjects?
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Yes, she includes herself, to answer your final question. And my problem is with the word “sorry”, not the word “apology” which is much more specific and less self-referential don’t you think?
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Oh I see. Yes.
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A further comment if I may: whatever the issues with the word “sorry”, it is achieving a new and more important meaning in Australia, in the context of our violent and often unacknowledged racist history. National Sorry Day gives the word a deepening, evolving meaning with its own history and significance.
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Yes, and of course that was at the front of my mind when I was writing the stanza. I did some work for the Sorry Book project more than a decade ago now, I’d say. I had teh privileged position of standing guard over the books while people wrote their ‘Sorry’ messages. I remember on celebrity doing a transparently performative piece, for instance. But one man I noticed in particular. He was very grim-faced as he wrote in the book, and left our booth without meeting anyone’s eyes or saying a word. Be it was our job was to check prevent if possible and remove as soon as possible any obscenities or racist/genocidal comments, I checked what he had written. He spoke of his own two-year-old daughter and the unimaginable horror of having her taken away. His grimness came from a deeply felt glimmering of the meaning of the Stolen Generations. So yes, I agree, the word has a deepening and evolving meaning here.
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