Debriefing Compliments

Posted to Gather, September 18, 2012 08:35 AM EDT

It’s hard to imagine anything looking more painfully wrong. The gown, while still dangling from a hanger in a doorway, reflected the impeccable skill and attention to detail that brought people in need of a special occasion seamstress to my mother’s door. The near paralyzing shock was not related to the garment.

My job that day was to assist with the hemming fitting. Jo changed into the gown and a pair of pumps, clunked across the room, and nearly broke her neck climbing up to stand on a chair. Mom measured and turned fabric – yards of fabric around the bottom of the full-length, gathered skirt of the gown. I held the red felt tomato cushion and supplied Mom with pins. I had done this many times before with no problem other than wondering why she placed the pins I handed her between her lips before using them on the dress. Was I too slow? Did it enable her to position the pin the way she wanted before using it? Did it replace the cigarette that was usually between her lips? What should I do if she swallowed a pin?

This time, seeking an explanation for the shocking wrongness replaced the usual boredom-evading questions. The soft, frilly, bubble-gum-pink bride’s maid gown looked ridiculous on Jo, who could easily have passed for a male in the cloths she had worn in. A quick, self-conscious meeting of the eyes told me she knew this as well as I did and couldn’t wait to change back into her trousers, plaid shirt, and Chuck Taylors.

Guilt almost destroyed me a few pins into the job. I was disappointed in me for not wanting to tell Jo she looked pretty in her new dress. And I hated myself for hoping Mom would swallow a pin since that was obviously the only thing that might stop her continuous stream of mumbled-around-pins, ridiculously unbelievable compliments. Couldn’t she see that Jo looked more miserable with each word?

By the time it was over, I felt as sorry for me as I did for Jo. Not only was I forced to witness the wrongness of Jo in her pink gown and pumps, and her misery in being complimented for looking a way I’m sure she never wanted to look, I was also forced to realize how little my mother’s compliments actually meant. Mom wasn’t blind or stupid so she couldn’t possibly have thought miserable and wrong was attractive on Jo. How many times had she complimented me because she thought it was the right thing to say and not because the compliment was sincere?

If I could relive that day, I would give Jo the honest compliment she deserved: You are a wonderful friend for agreeing to buy and wear this dress in your friend’s wedding since it isn’t your style and you will probably never wear it again.

I would like to believe that I learned a great lesson that day and, since I am older than dirt, that it was a different time and saying the wrong right thing got lost along the way. The truth is I’ve been slammed with that lesson repeatedly, as recently as last week.

I was present the day my daughters experienced this realization together, as adults. A friend, who had praised them from birth and whose compliments they had taken to heart, commented on the beautiful character of a group of people that neither of my daughters would ever have wanted to be compared to. I felt their eyes on me and hated to look because I knew immediately what each was feeling. How could they treasure the compliments she had paid them if her judgment was so different from theirs, or her honesty so questionable? We discussed it later and I shared my Jo story.

I might have learned to tailor compliments so they will honestly fit, and to withhold insincere praise. But, the fact that I can still feel the sting of false compliments, whether sent in my direction or aimed at someone else, or allow a lifetime of compliments to be negated when I hear someone whose opinion I appreciated lavish false compliments on someone else tells me I haven’t mastered this lesson yet.

The big question for me today falls in the chicken/egg category. I do believe that everything that happens, and every person who passes through my life, contributes to who I am today. If I had not had high self-esteem to begin with, how would insincere or undeserved compliments have affected me? Would I have blown them off and not believed them, or might they have boosted my esteem?