Despertar

she wants to know if i'm lost

My mom thinks I'm on the brink. She always answers my phone calls these days. She says, "Hi Shanny, I'm right in the middle of grading test papers and preparing for a conference call that starts in four minutes, I haven't eaten lunch yet and my boss is standing over my desk evaluating my productivity as we speak, but did you need something? What did you need?"

Meaning, no matter how outrageously busy she is, and she always is, she is always available to me, because she worries what might happen if she weren't.

Dane Cook has a routine about how, if you're already emotionally vulnerable, talking to your mother can really bring out the crier in you. This is true. I keep a lot of emotion saved up for my daily conversations with my mother. Once a week, probably, I wind up crying into my cell phone, because she hit a nerve by asking about the one thing, whatever it is, that derails me. Justin. Classes. What I had for dinner. Am I excited about San Francisco? Am I getting along with my roommate? She is a fantastic guesser; she always goes straight for whatever is bothering me most.

*

My dad is all business. Within five seconds of my answering the phone, he has grilled me on a million things I was supposed to have done, regarding housing or banking or schoolwork or whatever. He gets offended because I never call him "just to chat." I never do because every pleasant conversation turns into an interrogation, or, if I do let anything meaningful spill, I get a lecture on why feelings don't matter, and how achievement should make me happy.

He must have asked me a dozen times to set aside an hour to tell him about my spring break trip. A week ago, I finally did; I went home, made a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table to tell him every detail, since he was so desperately interested.

I included one non-objective detail--something about how it felt to shower and fall asleep after spending the whole day dirty and hot with equally dirty, hot friends--and he got bored. He didn't want to hear me muse or wax poetic on the fellowship, didn't know instinctively to prod me for details about Hugh, the way my mom did. He got bored and tried to skip me ahead to the end of the week, the return trip.

So now I know: I can only talk to him about things I don't really care about, inside.

*

My mother tries to coach him: "When the kids want to talk, that's when you should listen. You shouldn't grill them about things if they're not forthcoming. Sometimes they really want to talk about something, and when that happens, you should be ready for it. Shannon called me out of the blue the other day to talk about the kids she taught last summer. That's been months ago, but she wanted to talk about it now. I listened and she talked."

She tries to coach me: "There are just...everyone is a different type of listener. Men tend to be results-oriented listeners. They don't understand rehashing a problem just to rehash it. As soon as you tell the story, they want to tell you have to solve it. They don't know we just like to share, sometimes. But your dad cares, he does want to listen. You should just try to be patient and tell him stuff anyway, even if it doesn't seem like he's on the same wavelength."

*

It occurs to me that my dad will never leave my mom. He'd be too afraid he'd never speak to us again.