Concentrate and Ask
In his memoirs Born a Crime, Trevor Noah writes that we only come to know people in the silent moments we spend with them. In his attempts to better understand his mysterious Swiss-German father, Noah had spent a weekend peppering his father with questions about his background, only to find out that spending time together was how Noah figured out who his dad really was.
This passage struck me like a lightning bolt after having spent a weekend in my home state of New Mexico for my niece’s graduation. During this visit, I met with my own father, whom I haven’t seen in seven years. He and my mother separated suddenly after a 40-plus year marriage, and he has since played the victim card, dealing his bitterness at us, his adult children.
Our twenty-minute visit wasn’t a sob fest nor the “come to Jesus” talk estranged fathers and sons might have after such a long hiatus. It was simply spending time together, getting to know the other person in the silence. If he and I are going to be friends again, we have to start back at square one. We can only concentrate on the moment, the one which we spend together.
My intent to approach the weekend as a diplomat, and not a brat, had been well-thought out long before I got on the airplane to Albuquerque. There would have been no sense balling up my fists and pouting. While the visit helped, I won’t say it patched anything up. The wounds are still there. I do, however, believe the universe turned just a little. He met his grandsons for the first time. Isn’t that a tiny success? To see that his son has become a father.
If anything, our visit was another shake of the Magic 8 Ball I’ve been consulting since I was a boy. I had found one when I was about six years old at the five and dime, and asked it way back then if my parents would get a divorce. This weekend, I asked it about my father: Will we continue to stay in each other’s lives? Will we want to try to spend more time with each other? Cannot predict now, it said. Concentrate and ask again.
◊♦◊
Photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker.