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When I was a kid—when I lived in my parents’ house—there was something that my dad didn’t talk about.
It was something his parents didn’t talk about either—and so I don’t fault him for it.
He didn’t talk to me about emotions—his own or mine—because it was an unspoken chain that slithered through his family, a chain that forged it’s first link long ago.
The format of dinner-table conversations was almost always the same.
Certain topics were discussed. Certain topics were not discussed. It was about stating content and not so much about processing that content.
I think that might be why I developed a skill for parsing the emotion out of conversations—finding the meaning lurking behind what was said and unsaid.
It’s probably why I ultimately found myself pursuing a career in social work, in a healing profession.
My dad had—and has—a lot of admirable qualities.
He was a Spanish teacher for decades. He was a varsity basketball coach for an equal amount of decades. I learned my diligence, my persistence, and my tenacity from the example he set.
But again, the meaning he derived from his work and interests remained hidden. I knew it mattered to him—he did it day in and day out for years and years, after all—but I couldn’t identify why it mattered to him.
His diligence was reflected in how he took an interest in me. He took me to my sporting events. He talked me through the skills I practiced in soccer, basketball, and baseball.
Occasionally, he shared stories about playing those sports when he was a child. His eyes would glisten like a crackling fire when he spoke of those times.
And that was an indication that there was deep emotional resonance for him in those memories. Rarely did that emotion get formed in his words and delivered to me so that I could hear them.
I got older. I left the house in which my parents raised me.
I made a lot of mistakes in the years after moving out of my childhood home.
My mom had talked to me about my emotions quite a bit as I was growing up, but I learned most of what I know now from making mistakes in the years during and after college.
I especially learned about emotions, including fiery emotions like shame and humiliation, in the years after I left my childhood home.
More than that, I learned I wasn’t so good at dealing with those types of emotions in healthy ways. I drank when I should have meditated. I projected my feelings onto others when I should have listened to what they were telling me.
It was a long, winding road to learn what I had to learn.
Eventually, the road carried me to a conversation in Washington D.C. a few years ago.
I was sitting on the porch of a house owned by mom’s good friend from high school.
I was living in Montana at the time, but I was in the nation’s capital for a conference for state coordinators of a mental health project. The project was funded by a grant managed by the agency organizing the event. I was one of those state coordinators—one of the youngest there, if not the youngest.
I was surprised by how far I had come in talking about my own mental heath. I was learning how I could use my understanding of mental health to impact the world.
There was nothing significant about the conversation taking place on the porch that summer night.
My mom and dad were there, and they were doing most of the talking, answering the questions that my mom’s friend—our host for the weekend—was asking them.
It was a sleepy summer night in D.C, sticky with humidity, and I was leaning back in my chair, my eyes half-closed as I listened to my parents talk about what they were currently working on around the house, the house in Rochester, NY where they raised my sister and me.
My dad was talking about cleaning out the garage. Not the most thrilling topic by any stretch of the imagination.
Until he said something that made me snap into focus.
“We just had a garage sale to get rid of everything in the garage,” my dad stated to my mom’s friend.
My mom’s friend and my dad exchanged comments about what had been sold and about how much money had been made.
Then it happened.
“There was a plastic table I couldn’t sell. Someone was going to buy it, and I changed my mind at the last second.”
“Why?” my mom’s friend asked, suddenly intrigued.
“The kids used to sit there in the summer drawing on it.”
“But why couldn’t you sell it?” My mom’s friend still didn’t understand the importance of it.
But I knew.
“I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.” There was an awkward lull in the conversation.
My dad’s facial expression was changing, and I could tell that this memory of my sister and me being small and gleefully playing at the cheap, plastic, and multi-colored Playskool table of my childhood was making him emotional.
He grinned sheepishly as my mom turned her head to look at him.
My mom’s friend looked at me and my mom with a half-smile, still not understanding the full significance of what my dad was saying.
She was wondering if there was more to the story.
Of course, there was more to the story I knew in my heart.
My dad, a dad who loved efficiency and practicality, couldn’t part with a cheap, plastic table that was taking up quite a bit of space in the garage of my childhood home.
He just couldn’t do it. And I knew why.
It was important to him. Rather, the stories and emotions connected to that table were important to him.
To call attention to this would have embarrassed him.
My heart beat fiercely in my chest.
I leaned back in my chair, smiled, and let the sticky summer air carry the moment away.
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This post was originally published on medium.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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