Discussions with Dad & Lessons on Listening

A car in my neighborhood bears a sticker that reads It's more important to be kind than to be right. I learned this myself in a roundabout way, thanks to my dad.

At age 12  I started to question certain assumptions held by members of the community we hung out in. Like many adolescents, I thought that you could gauge the depth and sincerity of an opinion by how loudly and frequently it was proclaimed. Testing this theory led to some debates with Dad.

We had plenty of topics to choose from. In 1972 the Vietnam War was on. The older brothers of several of my friends had been drafted, and one of them never made it back home. There was Watergate, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, Affirmative Action, poverty and the ever-present A-list topic at church, abortion. Several of the teachers in our small school encouraged honest discussions about these issues in civics and current events classes but in the community as a whole, both sides of a position were rarely presented.

The best way to ignite interest in any topic is to censor it, so of course a certain number of my classmates and I found these issues fascinating. They provided a springboard for late-night discussions with Dad whenever he picked me up from an after-hours activity such as school plays and choir concerts.

We had some heated debates in the car but he never punished me for disagreeing with him, something that was fairly common back then. He didn't ground me, restrict my reading material or make me get out of the car and walk the last mile home, as had happened to one of my friends who'd talked back to her father. Dad and I had a good relationship regardless of the issue of the moment.

He listened to what I had to say. And in the course of our talks, the listening habit began to rub off on me. By 14 I was learning to bracket my opinions and inner yakking long enough to hear him.

I think he knew that eventually kids become adults and will make up their own minds about the issues important to them. I also think that to him it was more important to be a loving dad than it was to be "right." I've noticed that for the happiest and healthiest adults I've known, relationships trump opinions and listening to each other is crucial.  It's something I've tried to keep in mind not just in parenting but in friendships as well.

Shades of Gray

My son Noel’s education in ambiguity began at age 11 when we visited Amsterdam. As we strolled down the cobbled streets, he spied his first coffee shop complete with customers smoking pot. Not hippie or student backpacker customers but men in business suits and suburban housewives.

The streets harboring these coffee shops were models of safety and civility compared to many parts of our home city. Cars sped by but without the element of aggression I see in the U.S. People on the streets treated each other respectfully most of the time. Homicide in the Netherlands is so infrequent that when it happens, it makes front page news for weeks.

Back home, Noel had just completed the school district’s required unit on drugs and addiction in his health class. In the materials even coffee was listed as a drug. Marijuana was presented as the first step in an inevitable downward spiral towards crack or meth.

As he and I walked along, I could almost see his mental gears working overtime as he tried to reconcile what he was seeing in Amsterdam with the messages he’d gotten at school. He’d been exposed to other cultures all his life through foreign-born relatives and family friends, travel and forays into ethnic neighborhoods and food.

Furthermore, the idea of cultural relativity wasn’t new to him; he’d seen it in operation at family reunions and in school. But his encounter with legal pot, enjoyed the same way one would enjoy a glass of beer, jammed his circuits.

On one hand, I’m glad that schools educate kids about the harmful effects of addictive drugs. I used to work in special education classrooms and have seen what meth addiction does to families. I myself smoked during high school and college, back in the 70s and 80s, when any 15 year-old could stroll into 7-11 and buy cigarettes. Quitting was hard.

On the other hand, during the semester Noel was taking the health class he went through the True Believer phase typical of converts to just about any cause, when everything is black and white. He knew what was best for the entire family, and Dad’s homebrew wasn’t on the list. Sitting down with a glass of merlot at the end of a long day sparked lectures on drug abuse. My one remaining friend who still smoked had to sneak out the door when exiting for a cigarette break, just as I’d weaseled out the bedroom window (oiled to eliminate creaks) at 15.

Middle school kids are often still literal thinkers. It can be challenging to help them understand that the difference between acceptable risk and real danger is a matter of degree, that the world comes in shades of gray and that a loved one isn’t stepping off the deep end just because he likes a glass of Red Hook on a hot day.

He questioned. We talked. I presented him with the challenging idea that it’s possible to hold a sincere belief with all his heart while simultaneously accepting that equally sincere people disagree with him. I suggested that his best friend could oppose him on a hot issue and still be his best friend. We discussed the possibility that in any debate, both people can be right at the same time and that many truths exist side by side. I made him look up paradox in Webster’s.

Initially the concept of paradox puzzled him. How could two seemingly opposite ideas contain equal truth? In a culture used to linear thinking and obsessed with numerical ranking, a person can’t like both red and green equally well. She can’t be right-brained and left-brained, spiritual and skeptical or nice and nasty. That’s why political rhetoric that presents issues in good-versus-evil terms is often so effective. We want things to be simple. Life is hard enough without having to wrap our brains around multiple layers of truth.

However, when I couched these ideas in the “parallel universe” storytelling convention used by the fantasy authors he enjoyed, it all began to make sense to him. In such stories, two societies exist side by side in the same place but often their worlds are mutually invisible. He began to understand that the mere fact that he can’t see or understand something doesn’t mean it isn’t real or valid.

The fact that I hope he doesn’t start smoking pot doesn’t mean that I condemn the Dutch for keeping it legal, regulated and taxed. Contradictory? Probably. But who among us doesn’t hold sets of hunches, beliefs or inclinations that don’t jibe or fit together neatly like puzzle pieces? Whose inner blueprint doesn’t include shades of gray as well as black and white?

Being aware of the gray areas discomforts us. It brings up dilemmas. At what point does enjoyment segue into need, then into addiction? At what point does my attempt at flexibility turn me into a doormat? When is it appropriate to give up being diplomatic with difficult people and start pushing back? Which of my personal values and my culture’s values should I make relative and which are absolute?

As Noel goes through life, he’ll have to decide these things for himself. An enlarged awareness of other ways of life probably won’t make the job easier. Meeting people of other backgrounds or who hold opposing beliefs face to face makes it harder to vilify them when conflicts arise. In the course of some future adventure he may meet a potential soulmate and later find out to his dismay that some of his friend’s core beliefs are fundamentally different from his. Being able to see shades of gray doesn’t guarantee a comfortable life.

But I’ve concluded that growth is impossible without discomfort. Staying inside a small box, associating only with people who are mirror reflections of myself, would not only give me a grossly distorted view of the world but would limit my ability to experience all this world has to offer.

The best gift my husband and I were able to give Noel (now 20)  could be the ability to savor the world’s cultural bounty even as he struggles with conflicts and questions, to know that life doesn’t have to be comfortable in order to be good.

Seeing life in shades of gray or, using a more appropriate metaphor, in living color takes practice. However, it’s worth the effort. The view is so much better than in black and white.

My son Noel’s education in ambiguity began at age 11 when we visited Amsterdam. As we strolled down the cobbled streets, he spied his first coffee shop complete with customers smoking pot. Not hippie or student backpacker customers but men in business suits and suburban housewives.

The streets harboring these coffee shops were models of safety and civility compared to many parts of our home city. Cars sped by but without the element of aggression I see in the U.S. People on the streets treated each other respectfully most of the time. Homicide in the Netherlands is so infrequent that when it happens, it makes front page news for weeks.

Back home, Noel had just completed the school district’s required unit on drugs and addiction in his health class. In the materials even coffee was listed as a drug. Marijuana was presented as the first step in an inevitable downward spiral towards crack or meth.

As he and I walked along, I could almost see his mental gears working overtime as he tried to reconcile what he was seeing in Amsterdam with the messages he’d gotten at school. He’d been exposed to other cultures all his life through foreign-born relatives and family friends, travel and forays into ethnic neighborhoods and food.

Furthermore, the idea of cultural relativity wasn’t new to him; he’d seen it in operation at family reunions and in school. But his encounter with legal pot, enjoyed the same way one would enjoy a glass of beer, jammed his circuits.

On one hand, I’m glad that schools educate kids about the harmful effects of addictive drugs. I used to work in special education classrooms and have seen what meth addiction does to families. I myself smoked during high school and college, back in the 70s and 80s, when any 15 year-old could stroll into 7-11 and buy cigarettes. Quitting was hard.

On the other hand, during the semester Noel was taking the health class he went through the True Believer phase typical of converts to just about any cause, when everything is black and white. He knew what was best for the entire family, and Dad’s homebrew wasn’t on the list. Sitting down with a glass of merlot at the end of a long day sparked lectures on drug abuse. My one remaining friend who still smoked had to sneak out the door when exiting for a cigarette break, just as I’d weaseled out the bedroom window (oiled to eliminate creaks) at 15.

Middle school kids are often still literal thinkers. It can be challenging to help them understand that the difference between acceptable risk and real danger is a matter of degree, that the world comes in shades of gray and that a loved one isn’t stepping off the deep end just because he likes a glass of Red Hook on a hot day.

He questioned. We talked. I presented him with the challenging idea that it’s possible to hold a sincere belief with all his heart while simultaneously accepting that equally sincere people disagree with him. I suggested that his best friend could oppose him on a hot issue and still be his best friend. We discussed the possibility that in any debate, both people can be right at the same time and that many truths exist side by side. I made him look up paradox in Webster’s.

Initially the concept of paradox puzzled him. How could two seemingly opposite ideas contain equal truth? In a culture used to linear thinking and obsessed with numerical ranking, a person can’t like both red and green equally well. She can’t be right-brained and left-brained, spiritual and skeptical or nice and nasty. That’s why political rhetoric that presents issues in good-versus-evil terms is often so effective. We want things to be simple. Life is hard enough without having to wrap our brains around multiple layers of truth.

However, when I couched these ideas in the “parallel universe” storytelling convention used by the fantasy authors he enjoyed, it all began to make sense to him. In such stories, two societies exist side by side in the same place but often their worlds are mutually invisible. He began to understand that the mere fact that he can’t see or understand something doesn’t mean it isn’t real or valid.

The fact that I hope he doesn’t start smoking pot doesn’t mean that I condemn the Dutch for keeping it legal, regulated and taxed. Contradictory? Probably. But who among us doesn’t hold sets of hunches, beliefs or inclinations that don’t jibe or fit together neatly like puzzle pieces? Whose inner blueprint doesn’t include shades of gray as well as black and white?

Being aware of the gray areas discomforts us. It brings up dilemmas. At what point does enjoyment segue into need, then into addiction? At what point does my attempt at flexibility turn me into a doormat? When is it appropriate to give up being diplomatic with difficult people and start pushing back? Which of my personal values and my culture’s values should I make relative and which are absolute?

As Noel goes through life, he’ll have to decide these things for himself. An enlarged awareness of other ways of life probably won’t make the job easier. Meeting people of other backgrounds or who hold opposing beliefs face to face makes it harder to vilify them when conflicts arise. In the course of some future adventure he may meet a potential soulmate and later find out to his dismay that some of his friend’s core beliefs are fundamentally different from his. Being able to see shades of gray doesn’t guarantee a comfortable life.

But I’ve concluded that growth is impossible without discomfort. Staying inside a small box, associating only with people who are mirror reflections of myself, would not only give me a grossly distorted view of the world but would limit my ability to experience all this world has to offer.

The best gift my husband and I were able to give Noel (now 20)  could be the ability to savor the world’s cultural bounty even as he struggles with conflicts and questions, to know that life doesn’t have to be comfortable in order to be good.

Seeing life in shades of gray or, using a more appropriate metaphor, in living color takes practice. However, it’s worth the effort. The view is so much better than in black and white.

Apple Pie, Tamales, Kimchi and the July 4 Cultural Salad Potluck

One of my most memorable Fourth of July celebrations happened many years ago in Dallas, where I was serving a one-year stint as a refugee resettlement caseworker (sort of like Americorp today) and living with 3 other volunteers. None of us had family in the area. We decided to invite our fellow staff members over for a big do; most of them had been refugees themselves and didn't have plans.

We volunteers supplied the BBQ and apple pie. Our colleagues brought favorite dishes from their various countries. The Vietnamese caseworker came with spring rolls, our Ethiopian friends brought anjera, a spongy flat bread, and spicy stew which is eaten by hand, grabbing about a spoonful's worth with the bread. A former client-turned-friend brought kolaches from his native Czech tradition. The job placement expert, a Polish woman who'd come to the U.S. shortly after WWII, brought her version of potato salad. An Iranian rice pilaf, Mexican tamales and Korean kimchi rounded things out nicely.

Our guests jumped right into the spirit of things and I saw that while all of them loved their homelands and would have stayed if they could, they also appreciated most aspects of life in America in spite of any inconveniences. Their attitude was "both, and," not "either/or." In terms of appreciation, they saw no need to choose between the cultures of their old and new homes.

Someone once wrote that the melting pot metaphor isn't quite accurate; the U.S. isn't so much a stew as a salad. All the ingredients are mixed together but the individual flavors and textures are still apparent. I like the salad image. Unlike stew, salads are colorful and crunchy, sort of like neighborhood life in any of our major cities where there's a mixture of cultures.

In community life as with food, adding new ingredients & mixing keeps things fresh.

Motherhood Outside the Box

When I was pregnant I always noticed the cheery pictures painted by ads or articles directed at expectant parents in catalogs and magazines. The first months with a new baby looked like the emotional equivalent of a warm cozy cocoon where dreams of endless possibilities took root, like a long running live version of Goodnight Moon. And the baby years were wonderful.

But I noticed something else: certain news items, ones I would have dismissed with "Oh, how sad" when I was younger, jumped out at me. World problems that I'd studied and debated about in college - hunger, war, epidemics - became much more real. Some stories were almost impossible to read or hear without cringing. All of them featured children in trouble.

 The year my now-20 year old son was born was the same year that the local serial killer of children Westley Allan Dodd was convicted. One of his victims was 4 years old. Later that year, four of the five children from a nearby family died in a house fire. Even as I read good-night stories, I remember thinking My God, how do parents stand it? How can you go on after something like that? Why bother with living? I'm sure that bereaved parents ask themselves these exact questions many times.

In my experience one of the most difficult aspects of parenting is knowing that the unthinkable has happened to someone, somewhere, and that there's no guarantee that it couldn't happen to you. We can fool ourselves with illusions of specialness (That kind of thing doesn't happen in our neighborhood. We're more careful. People don't starve in our country.) but deep down, I think most of us know that these are illusions.

Being able to imagine the pain another family is going through or having heightened awareness of the painful experiences of others in general probably isn't something any of us wish for. But for many parents I've met, it comes with the territory. It's not comfortable.

But maybe it's necessary. Discomfort prods us out of our personal cocoons and forces us to work together at finding solutions to problems like childhood diseases, human predators and unsafe houses. We can't bring small victims of tragedies back to life but we can do our best to make sure it doesn't happen again.

For me, the unsettling knowledge that what happens to any child happens to all of us has become simply part of life. It forces me to look outside the it's-all-about-me-and-my-kids box so prevalent now. It reminds me that even though I have an empty nest, there's no shortage of work that needs doing out in the wider world.

In many traditional societies, a woman whose children have grown and left home becomes a wise-woman figure whose knowledge and skill benefit the entire society. In celebration of Mothers Day, maybe those of us who've received gifts in the past could regift or pay forward by making the world a little bit healthier or safer for all our kids.

Gifts of 50

An old friend and I recently spent an evening comparing notes on how it feels to be 50. She said something like "If she were still alive, my mom wouldn't recognize the territory." Both of us remember growing up during an era when 50 really was considered elderly. Women were supposed to wear their hair short and permed into something resembling a helmet, dress conservatively, cook for church socials and sit around waiting for grandkids to happen. Well, okay, they could volunteer for a favorite charity while waiting, but only for one afternoon a week.

Thankfully there are many more options now. Having choices and longer life spans has made it relatively easy for many women in so-called developed countries to really enjoy the benefits of maturing, something women one hundred years ago often didn't live long enough to experience. One of those gifts is being able to benefit from the life lessons we pick up along the way.

If I were able to pass the most useful of these lessons on to my 25 year-old self, this is what I'd tell her:

1. Relax; it's not all about you. As a teenager I remember feeling as though everyone was looking at me through critical eyes, including teachers, guys and the fashion police. Most of my friends have similar memories. In high school, every social faux pas, no matter how insignificant, was examined under the microscope of peer pressure. College and young adulthood were less intense but the feeling was still there. I made one of my happiest discoveries in my mid-20s when I finally realized that every school, office or social circle was just a tiny microcosm, and that most of the world really didn't care what I wore, ate or did on any given day. As I've gotten older I've also seen that this applies to subjective experiences; I don't have to attach an undue amount of importance to momentary emotions, reactions or opinions. This detachment actually makes it easier to step back from heated situations and think before responding.
2. Life's not a contest. In a large family, siblings compete for parental attention. In school, we compete for the teacher's favor, good grades and a place on the varsity team. In middle school this expands to competing for friends, dates and popularity. When I graduated from college in 1982, it was the dress-for-success era and young adults competed for prestigious positions and top pay. My own 30s were fairly mellow since my husband and I decided not to buy into the high-stakes helicopter parenting popular during the 90s. But for many of the other moms I met at schools and activities, parenting was almost a blood sport, complete with weekly score-keeping (her son made team captain but mine got into Yale!). Even parents and kids who can float above all this sometimes have to resist being drawn into this particular sinkhole; other parents routinely asked me if I wasn't afraid that putting a limit on activities would cause irreparable damage to a kid's chances of success. It didn't, and I learned that I can ignore most competitive games, wherever they're being played.
3. Good enough is good enough. I'm not a perfectionist by nature so this lesson hasn't been too hard for me to integrate. Nonetheless, each of us has an area of two where we tend to obsess over minor imperfections. Sadly for many young women, body image is one of those areas. At age 10 I was wondering how to save up enough money to have my nose "fixed" - I wanted a small upturned one like Cheryl Tiegs or Cybil Shepherd, the two top models during the early 70s. Later I doused my hair with lemon juice and broiled it in the sun in an effort to become blond. During college I joined the hordes of joggers, rowed with crew and did punishing high-impact aerobics routines in an effort to be perfectly fit. A decade later, I obsessed over dirty floors and crumb-flecked counters. Only after realizing that neither my happiest friends nor their equally happy households were perfectly put-together did I cut myself some slack. Now I do it regularly. Life's too short to spend it keeping the house dust-free or frantically trying to look like I'm 20.
4. It's not a life-or-death matter unless it's literally life or death. Maybe this point is part of "good enough." Once we realize this, we're set free from the everyday drama that drains valuable energy.  Some people react to relatively small matters by exploding. Others, like me, stew over it. Both reactions can build stress to toxic levels. Being able to separate the truly important matters from the fluff has been one of the most valuable skills I've begun to acquire (I'm still working on it).
5. Be kind. We're all carrying a load. I saw this on a sign at my son's martial arts school and it stuck. It reminds me to remember that I really don't know everything that goes on behind someone's seemingly irrational actions or words. This doesn't excuse bad or dangerous behavior - each of us is still accountable for our actions and their effect on others. However, recalling this lesson has made it easier for me to pause before firing off an angry email reply or assuming that the driver who drove into the crosswalk just in front of me is a total jerk. Not taking things personally removes a huge load from the emotional baggage cart.

All of these learnings add up to relax and enjoy the ride. Come to think of it, living is a lot like driving - if you're busy enjoying the passing scenery and conversing with your traveling companions, you're not going to pay attention to who's faster or who has a better car.

Banish Banality; Long Live Lusty Language

Hearken to me, you world-weary cynics. Are you tired of scurrilious language and churlish public manners? Does ordinary foul-mouthing sound fusty to you? Do you long to give someone a piece of your mind without stooping to such unseemly behavior yourself? Take a lesson from Shakespeare and his Elizabethan compatriots, and join me in reviving the art of creative cursing.

In this endeavor I refer to a message on Shakespearean insults that crossed my screen some years ago. This message contained a table with three columns, two listing adjectives and one listing nouns. Choose a word from each column and string them together to create custom invectives for any occasion.

Think of how much more refined our public life would be if we engaged in florid fulminating instead of simply firing off f-bombs or giving the finger. The problem with our current vocabulary is that it’s banal and boring. Maybe this is the result of overuse; like angry bumper stickers, we’re exposed to so much profanity these days that the shock value is gone. Liberal doses of it sprinkled throughout movies and books sound lame, not edgy.

As I waited in line at a busy store recently, I overheard this exchange:

Guy #1: Man, I hate my boss. Total jerk (not the precise word used).

Guy #2: Sucks, man.

Guy #1: Yeah, well, screw him.

Now imagine the exchange sounding like this:

Guy #1: My boss is the veriest onion-eyed scoundrel.

Guy #2: What, such pernicious outrageous fortune!

Guy #1: A pox on him, the knavish rugheaded pantaloon.

Possible uses for creative curses extend beyond the personal into the public arena. Take political campaigns, for instance. The quality of insulting exchanges has sadly deteriorated since Spiro Agnew coined his famous “nattering nabobs of negativism” Royenish mottle-minded jackanape sounds more villainous than liar or cheat. If candidates widened their vocabularies and polished their imaginations, televised debates would be entertaining again.

Or consider the workplace. When a crafty coworker steals the promotion with your name on it, try muttering “That whoreson dogheaded cutpurse!” instead of an ordinary “Why, that S.O.B.” When your boss turns down your request for a raise, think “grizzled sour-faced minimus” instead of whining to yourself about the unfairness of it all. Not only will you feel righteous but you’ll add the sort of element of high drama to office politics that makes mundane jobs juicy.

And what would a breakup be without passionate recriminations? Surprise your soon-to-be-ex with a parting shot like “you wenching lily-livered miscreant!” or “If I’d only known you’re a total wanton empty-hearted scullion!” and I guarantee you won’t be soon forgotten.

Children could be taught Shakespearean as a second language, thus giving them a sophisticated tool for battling verbal bullies. “Leave me alone, you reeky motley-minded hedge-pig” would confound harassers used to “I h8 u” and other semiliterate sentiments in textese.

It may take awhile to become accustomed to linguistic flourishes. However, after a certain amount of practice, phrases like gleeking clay-brained clodpole and spongy milk-livered measle will probably come tripping off your tongue. The uses of Shakespearean insults are limited only by the imagination of the user. Try it the next time someone cuts you off on the freeway.

Fie, rapscallion!

(Here's a link to a handy Shakespearean "insult kit").