Years ago, I lived down the road from a little country store. At the time, they had a tiny bar in a room off the store, and I tended bar and worked in that store for a while.

Late last summer, I was coming back from hawk watch and passed that store. I wanted to make a stop, but the owners had been on my mind and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see them right now. Besides, I didn’t even know if they were still there. So I went on, many miles down the road, and stopped at the next store.

I walked in, and there were the owners from the old store. They now owned this one. They remembered me, but not my name. We chatted a bit. Eddie smiled, “It’s nice to see you again.”

Weird, I thought. Well, now I know where to find them.

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Two days before Christmas, I steel my resolve, read over my notes, and head out. Stop in town and use the ATM at the bar in town…I hate the fees and I’m not crazy about being in the bar either, but I need to be quick before I lose my nerve. I get change for one of the twenties so I’d have a neat fifty dollar bundle at the ready in my pocket. And then head for the store.

Eddie’s wife is there. I shift uneasily, waiting behind someone buying beer. “Is Eddie here?” I ask, and immediately wish I hadn’t.

“No, he’s not. What do you need?” My emotions begin to get the best of me. Godammit. Now I’m standing here in this store, tears welling up, asking some guy’s wife if he’s around and if I can talk to him. I have to tell her why I’m there. I know what I’d think if I were in her shoes.

I make my humiliating explanation and then flee. I’m screwing this up.

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It’s almost a week later when I finally go back with my little fifty dollars. There’s a kid behind the counter, but I wait behind another person buying beer, and Eddie emerges from the back with stock for the deli counter. He’s a quiet man, smiles at me and looks down. Yes, he heard why I was stopping by.

I tell him that I was responsible for that big Red Wolf beer mirror being stolen from the bar way back then; I didn’t take it myself, but I allowed, even encouraged it to happen. When he asked me about it at the time, I lied to him and feigned surprise about the theft, even when he explained that it was going to cost him four or five hundred dollars because the stupid thing was on loan from the distributor and wasn’t even his.

I tell him now that I want to pay it off; that I want to make it right over the next few months. He smiles and says that he never had to pay for it after all. He says he’s glad that I’m telling him now. He won’t take any money, even though I want to give it to him anyhow. He sends me on my way with a, “Keep up the good work.”

I’m not sure I actually do feel better afterwards. There is a weight lifted, of having done this and at least stumbled clumsily through it. But there is a humbleness that settles over me, perhaps a truer humility than I’ve felt before. I’m not sure I like it. My mind races…maybe I can come here to do all my grocery shopping and give them all my business from now on! Maybe I’ll bake them a bunch of cookies! Maybe I’ll…maybe I can….

And I realize that probably what Eddie and his family would like the most is for this crazy teary woman to quit coming by the store and making them feel embarrassed.

I have to face my own imperfections, the factual wrongs that I’ve done. I have to face that there is never any going back to undo what has been done. There is no, “Oh yes, that was me but…” There is only, “Yes. That was me.” And I have to face the fact that my ego does not like feeling like Eddie and his family have one up on me. They know about some of my misdeeds and my ego really doesn’t like that. I also have to face the truth that my brain likes to try to tell me that I’m better than everybody else and it does not like being presented with the real facts.

Worst of all, there is no magical cleaning it all up and being perfect from now on. I will continue to be a human with faults.

Can I accept this imperfect human being? THAT is what’s nagging at me most, that’s at the core of this uneasiness. I have to move beyond this cycle of thinking that I’m going to get some fresh start, some clean slate, if I can only close the door on my past and suddenly be perfect in my future. I always thought that would be freedom and happiness. But there is some zen-like temporal shift in all of this; the past is. I can’t stop the past from being, any more than I can stop the future from happening. To accept who I am now means I also have to be willing to accept who I was then, and the imperfect me I will be in the future. To liberate myself from myself, one clumsy ugly piece at a time. A futile yet necessary effort.

There is nothing to do but to continue to work for it.