After a heartbreak some little while ago, I lamented to my friend Lissa that I still loved that asshole. Which made it hard.
“Who cares!” Lissa said. “It doesn’t matter! You love everyone! That’s just who you are!”
True enough.
I thought of that conversation this morning, of course, because it’s Singles Awareness Day. Which, even when I was not single, was never really a thing, despite my being a person who loves everyone.
When my older son Eli was in college, he sent me an essay he thought would be right up my alley, William Cronon on history and story. It was precisely right up my alley.
And I was deeply moved, because we so seldom expect our children to really see or know us, to know what makes us tick, or to wonder about us as separate and fully enfranchised beings.
I knew then that he had grown up.
Even though they wouldn’t let me say it in their college application Philosophy of Education statements, I have always said-slash-teased that the point of an education is to get more jokes.
But getting jokes is really all about making connections, isn’t it? So the jokes are a swell side-effect. But the more tender and hopeful possibility is that making connections allows us to see each other. Really see.
I remembered this today because a year ago I wrote that my younger son, Seth, a senior in college then, was taking a religion class. He was an aviation student, so it was the first time in four years that his class schedule remotely resembled what I think of as “college.” And we’ve had fun conversations, because now we share more common language.
And on this day a year ago, Seth asked me if I’d heard of William James. (Yes.) The class was reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, which I had read back in the olden days in a class with Marcus Borg. Evidently, James’s bit on “conversions,” etc., made Seth wonder about my “breakup with the church” some years back.
At that time, Seth himself was four years old. It didn’t occur to me that he would remember that chapter of our lives. I was surprised. And just like that moment with Eli, when I knew he had understood something essential about me, Seth’s asking the question was startling and moving.
His religion class opened a door for some lovely conversation, but, more importantly, for us to see each other.
Flowers are fine. And I never turn down chocolate. But anyone can throw chocolate or flowers around.
The gestures that say I see you are the most lovely of all, and they don’t require money. Instead, they require our authentic presence and attention, which is quite a bit more dear.