When a parent listens: for my mother and my children

Here would be a nice place
to listen to someone you love.

There comes a time as you’re growing up, when you realize that your life would be easier if your parent would not always shine a big flashlight on the parts that aren’t quite right and start asking questions.

Because, when you’re growing up you just can’t know yet that everything is in progress. You are sure that what is true about you right now will be true forever, and some of those things, you’d like to keep to yourself, thank you very much.

And, you don’t need your parent asking you how you’re handling this, what you are doing about that, what’s going on with whatever that thing is that’s going on. Because, you don't even know yourself.

No, you would like your parent to notice the highs, not the lows, please. Ask about the achievements, not the missteps. Not worry about you.  See you the way you wish to be seen, as a smart, independent person who doesn’t need a parent hovering.

And so, that’s the story of you that you offer.

And that is what your parent does.

Your parent celebrates the story you offer.

A day comes later, when you realize your parent probably knew there was more to that story you told, but knew it was more important to let you sit with it for a while, maybe look back at a few pages, maybe do your own guessing about what would happen next.    

Later still, you begin to realize that what you say, what you look like, what you’re wearing on the outside makes people form opinions about you. And while only the outside cover of your story is available to them, you will eventually want to share some of the inside pages too.

Because, you have learned that trusting another with your inside stories, and hearing theirs, is also known as love.

There comes a time when you’ve grown up, and you realize the weight of your worth. You know your gifts, your capacity to love and be loved. You’ve accepted your flaws, and know your empathy. You understand compassion and pride. You realize that where your mind goes, your heart is already there waiting to ask your mind a few questions, just to make sure they're on the same page, looking out for you.

You like your story a lot now, even if you’re still writing it. You are still sharing it with your parent, because now, there are parts they won’t know any other way. You have learned that they will listen now, to learn about you again.

Later, when you have your own small child, they will begin to tell you their own first lines, and soon, it won’t be a page they give you, but a small stack of pages. You will know what they’re leaving out, and you will let them do that.

Being listened to has taught you that you are lovable as much for what you don’t show, as what you tell. 

Being listened to has taught you that for all you would give to those you love so much, if you have been listening, you have offered it already. 

When couples differ politically, it might feel like a test because it is.

Here would be a nice place
to gently discuss politics

My husband was scheduled to have surgery recently. It was a procedure that would require general anesthesia and so, the night before, without a hint of drama, he asked me to sit with him so he could show me how he’d organized our vital documents.

Now, he said, they were sorted and placed in a good sturdy binder with tabs and cover sheets that described them.

When I came in, he had the binder on his lap, and he laid a hand on it. "Everything you need is right here," he said, while I thought about the words, everything and need and the binder that will never exist to guide me toward them.  

My husband leans right and I lean left.  Sometimes, we lean so hard we fall over. But, fingers crossed, neither of us has been so “far” in either direction that we've lost sight of each other.

But in moments of intense disagreement, when I can’t square a conservative view with what I know of his heart, I have wondered how people like us remain close while feeling apart on something as important as politics.

Later, away from such moments, when I am wondering what I need at the store, or whether to submit this or that piece, or want to share something my husband will find funny or poignant or surprising, I remember those moments and shake my head to understand:  politics does not just create arguments, it creates arguments that dwarf everything else that is important.

Political differences are more illuminating than our similarities. They reflect who we’ve become on the spectrum of personal change as we age and experience. They challenge the couple culture that formed around earlier versions of ourselves. If we’re some of us, political differences drive us to shore up the core and remain connected in the ways we always were. If we’re others of us– even people who have weathered far worse storms – they are grounds to separate from each other.

Our most resilient bonds lie there, at that core where it isn’t about politics but our family and friends and feeling for someone who is struggling, and whether our children are okay, and what we want for dinner, and how to communicate so that we think about the way we’re heard more than what we want to say.

At the core is the worry and joy we share when things happen to one of us, in the world of both of us.  Like surgery. 

Do I have to remember that when we disagree? I do. We’ve worked hard to respect our differences without seeing each other differently.

Our president’s divide-and-conquer mentality, and the vulgar way he demonizes those not willing to support him unconditionally, have taught his more combative followers to see those with whom they disagree the way our president sees his critics. The exchanges that are caught on video are heartbreaking.

In these times, in many of those minds, you are or you ain’t.

You’re right or you’re left. You’re Trump or you’re Warren. You’re a liberal who cares for the less fortunate or you’re a conservative who tells homeless people to get a job.

My husband and I are mindfully closer to the middle. He still makes me breakfast on Sunday and I still make beef stew when we're snowed in. We watch stuff on TV together, and I encourage him to think about a second dog because it would be good for him. He asks me about my writing and my ideas. When one of us isn’t well, or happy or sure about things, the other one steps up to reassure, comfort, make jokes.

We have had to learn new ways of having simple conversations if disagreement is likely. He has had to stop interrupting, and I have had to stop making bad faces. Both of us are learning to say to each other and to others from whom we differ, “Tell me why you see it that way,” and not, “Let me tell you why you’re wrong.” 

Before Trump, we were and still are, parts of the past, the present and the future that we imagined for ourselves. The future, as it always has, will borrow from that core that brought us together and make us stay put.

My husband’s surgery is in the past now, and he is fine, I still have everything that I need and I know two new things. Where the documents are, and that what exists between people who love each other is not about what stays the same, but what lasts.