Do you hear what I hear?

"The first duty of love is to listen."



The pastor this morning used this quote to open his sermon on the sense of hearing in our relationship with God. The quote struck me this morning in how Mom reflected God's love to me throughout my life.



When I heard the quote this morning, it resonated throughout me. First, as a reminder to me that God is always listening, and always understands, even better than we do and are able to communicate. Then, it struck me that this also was Mom's gift - her personal brilliance in parenting. She wasn't perfect, by any means. I don't wish to fall into the trap of idolizing the dead, flattening them into a dreary character of all black and white. But Mom had love for us (and for so many others in her life), and she showed it by listening.


I have always admired my Mom as a parent. Even as a preteen, I longed for the day when I could become a mom myself, because of two main reasons. First, I felt both Mom and Dad were good parents and would be even better grandparents, and I was anxious to get to share that experience with them. Second, I was eager to enact myself the lessons in mothering that I had lived each day with my own mom.






(Mom making Easter Eggs with Maggie, 2007)


So, of course, with these motivations so strongly involved as I went into parenting, I feel it all the more keenly when I see myself falling short of what I have learned from Mom. I find that I have two main struggles: Attention and Patience.

I live in a cluttered mind. My attention is so often inward, where there are stories and scripts always running - both looking forward and into the future. Jeremy and I joke about it as we once heard this perfectly described as having "an active inner life." I am generally comfortable in this - it is who I am. Jeremy has gotten used to the fact that I might be miles away even when I appear fully present. (It was the effects of this personality trait that led me to bow out of serving with our church's preschoolers - I found I could contentedly watch a 2-year-old unwind an entire cassette tape, one finger turn at a time - and never really process that I should intervene.) Yet, of course, much more significantly, it can interfere with my ability to really listen to the people I am with. One place I feel this shortcoming is in my parenting.

I also am a bit of a hothead. I guess the most classic example of this is from my college days. As a senior, I should have developed enough self-control to at least pretend to be polite to my professors. But I had one particularly irritating instructor, at least in my mind. It wasn't just the fact that I felt that he wasn't helping us in the ways I was sure we students we deserved; it was that he seemed to know that and take gleeful pride in it - some sort of smug superiority that he knew the better way to teach us for our own good. So I can still shamefully recall, more than 15 years later, how I one day shouted at him in class, "And where did that number come from? Did you just pull it out of your butt?"

So, this feistiness serves well in some contexts, actually. I can be the one to say that the emperor has no clothes. But parenting does not seem to be one of these beneficial contexts. How often I find myself being impatient (and unkind) with my children. I can snap and yell all day long, alternating with remorseful over-kindness. I sometimes feel like the classic abusive spouse, storming and raging and then trying to make up for it the next day with a shower of presents and affection. Oh, how I have wrestled with myself and with God to forgive me and to grant me greater patience for the next day.

Mom, on the other hand, seemed to be made of patience. She must have gotten angry - she was human, after all. But I recall only a few instances of her anger showing, and those times stand out to me as being almost comical, as if a rabbit suddenly decided to rage ineffectually against a wolf. Rather, Mom greeted most things with a deep breath, a long pause, a slow chewing on her bottom lip. And then, she got to work. She started solving things. Because that was what she did.

But how did she know the right solutions? Well, as it hit me this morning in church, I think she so often knew because, out of love, she listened. She listened well, and she listened all the time.

As the Bible exhorts, she was quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19). Thus, I have no memories of her yelling in the way that I so often snap at my own children. She was busy listening to us instead. If my kids are slow to carry out my instructions, I yell. Mom listened, and figured out what was distracting us, and gently removed that first. If my kids disappoint me with their whining or selfishness or thoughtlessness, I yell. Mom listened, and heard that we needed a nap, or food, or a hug after a difficult day. If my kids express angst about the world and how it works, I struggle with wanting to jump in and take away the hurt by just erasing it. Mom listened, and just let us be sad for a while before the inevitable problem-solving session began.

I recall Mom listening this way with my own child, James. He is a child who feels things deeply. Even at five, he was given to bouts of despair over a situation. Unfortunately, at five, he wasn't always able to articulate exactly what it was that was upsetting him. (For that matter, how many adults are able to do this?) He was one night in a self-pitying funk that quickly dissolved into tears, shouting, a declaration of "I wish I didn't live in this family," and a retreat to his bed. I was feeling fed up with the tantrums and quite happy to leave him to his own medicine. Luckily for James, Mom was staying with us that night. She quietly went in and just rubbed his back. When he was calmer, she started asking him questions. And she just let him talk. And perhaps most importantly, she took his answers seriously. I wish I had saved the piece of paper she wrote on that night. As she listened to James, she wrote for him in two lists - "Reasons why I should leave this family," and "Reasons why I should stay." (Grandma Di's cooking as a reason to stay is actually the only item I still recall. That still makes me smile.) Mom later handed me the list as if she were giving me the Rosetta Stone to James. I know at the time, I pooh-poohed it. James was in a funk. Kids do that. He would get over it. But perhaps Mom, better than I, understood the truism expressed by author Orson Scott Card in his introduction to the novel, Ender's Game. (Card had been criticized for writing about a young boy using the voice of an adult. Card responded that this had been deliberate: as he thought back over his life, he could not remember a single moment when he felt anything less than a full human being, with less than full needs and wants and emotions. A child's thoughts and emotions are not child-sized to the child.) So Mom really listened to James, then took him seriously enough to write down what she heard to try to pass it along to those who could effect change for him. We didn't ever hear from James again about wanting to leave the family, and we never discussed it again. Perhaps knowing that someone, in this case his Grandma Jean, had really heard him was all he needed.

(Mom reading to James, 2003 )





I have one beautiful adult memory of Mom's listening to me. Some months after losing my first pregnancy, I recall Mom saying some things that hit me as cruel. She just didn't seem to get it, how I was feeling. For a while, I held my tongue and simmered, feeling wretched that even my own mother couldn't seem to empathize with me. One day, I finally tried to explain to her, tearfully, one small piece of my pain. I explained how it was hard for me that the world had moved on before me - I had faced the due date of my baby and besides Jeremy, nobody else cared, or even knew. Now, I don't think I was very gentle with Mom. It has never been my style, after all. (Remember how kind I was to the irritating professor?) But she didn't respond in anger.

Rather, Mom, as usual, was slow to speak and quick to listen. I remember her simply apologizing to me that day that she hadn't understood. But it was months later when she proved her apology to me. I knew that she really had been listening, when the anniversary of the due date of my first child again arrived, along with a card from Mom. She remembered. And she remembered every year after that - with a card, a small gift, something. Even after my heart had healed enough to move on, to not face that day with dread each year, I still could count on Mom remembering.

Mom is two years gone now, and my heart feels as if it will never heal from this blow. For when she was on the earth with us, Mom demonstrated her love to me through attention and patience, which allowed her to truly listen.

Mornings with John

It is Wednesday, 8 AM. James and Maggie left half an hour ago with the carpool for school. John, as he occasionally does, slept in through the noise of the big kids getting ready, and has just stumbled out of bed.

He stands at the top of the stairs for a few moments, staring sleepily. He often does this on waking, as if in these first quiet moments of the day, he would prefer to have the world come acknowledge him than for him to have to go engage the world. I don't mind, as this is a sign that he will be amenable to snuggling, which is getting more rare.

I hug John tightly and carry him down to the kitchen to sit on my lap. He rests contentedly for a minute. Then, over my shoulder, he spies the table and what it holds. "Mommy, I want to go eat that cereal." Suddenly, he is fully awake.

"That cereal" is the what remains in the bowl that James had to leave behind when carpool arrived. I give John a look and he giggles. He and I both know that he would rather eat James's or Maggie's leftover cereal than his own new bowl, anyday. Perhaps it is his innate personality - the independent streak, the boy who wants to make his own way in the world. Perhaps it is the 3rd child personality - he is used to taking what he can get when he can get it. Perhaps he just likes the connection to his older siblings, whom we misses while they are away all day.

Whatever the reason, there is no surer way to get him to eat a good breakfast. He wolfs down half a bowl of corn chex (which he would never ask for or eat on his own), then is grinning and ready to start the day.

Open Door Policies

The college where I work has an Open Door Policy. I know this because every Friday at 1:45 PM (plus a few other scattered times throughout the week), a tour group of prospective students tramps past my office. I have heard the patter that has been scripted by the Admissions Department for my section of the hallway uncountable times over my 11 years working here.

"When the architect designed this building, the classrooms were put in the center with faculty offices around the outside. This was intentional to increase accessibility. We have an Open Door Policy here. [Most of the time] when professors are in their offices, they will leave the door open to let students know they are available all the time for students to just drop by."

Lovely sentinment, I suppose, in an abstract sense. But you might notice the phrase in brackets. That has been added (intermittently) over the years, perhaps in response to the fact that some faculty on my hallway (me, most notably) never got the memo from the Provost as to this Open Door Policy. Thus, just as the student tour guide reaches this critical moment in the memorized speech, they come to me, at work behind my very closed door.

Now, I am actually quite available. I always answer to a knock on the door, whatever I am in the middle of doing. I never reject a student's request to meet/talk unless I am on my way to a scheduled class or a meeting. But the fact is, my work entails some jobs other than chatting with students, and I can't function to accomplish these real tasks with the door open to the constant traffic noise of the hallway. So, I continue to happily ignore this dubious college policy.

Recently, however, I have been pondering the policy more often in the context of parenting. (In 11 years of being a college professor and 9 years of parenting small children, I am actually awestruck by the similarities in the two job descriptions.) My children, it seems, have easily assumed the existence of an Open Door Policy in our home. In general, I think this is good. I certainly want them to feel free to approach me about whatever is on their mind. I want them to always feel comfortable confiding in me, so that all of their wisdom won't come from themselves, or perhaps worse, from their current culture or their peers. However, there are times when I struggle with limits; when I long to slam my door shut, so to speak.

My mom with my brother Jeff, ca. 1980

Now, I am comfortable with a fair bit of physical closeness. I grew up in a family with five people, one bathroom, and low inhibitions. My brothers and I were welcome in our parents' room when we felt lonely at night or had nightmares. My kids enjoy the same freedoms, and I am really fine with that, most of the time. In fact, I don't even necessarily notice, as you can see from this picture of John and I slightly past midnight a few months ago.

         Me with my son John, January 2010

So, I cringe when I find myself feeling less than generous toward my kids. But it turns out that my precious commodity at home is not a closed door, but a chance to sleep. Lately, it seems that our Open Door Policy at home is more of an Open Season on waking up Mom.

Now, I am sure I exaggerate. Perhaps this has been more of an issue lately only because I have been sick for a number of weeks (nasty respiratory virus) and that has caused me to sleep much more than usual. Or perhaps my kids are feeling my absence more now that I work the afternoon shift, and are making up for that by seeking time with me when they can. But it feels to me that all 3 kids have been going out of their way to wake up Mom. And I haven't been able to react in a particularly kind way.

Let's see... John came in one evening after he had been put to bed and I was just drifting off to sleep in my own bed. "Mom? Mom!" I vaguely heard him but didn't feel the need to pull myself up through the haze of sleep to answer him. After all, he was supposed to be in bed. So John took matters into his own hand and promptly smacked me across the face to get my attention. He did. All this for... he wanted me to read him another story.

I had had a bad night, when I was up late working, then just after getting to sleep, John was up vomiting and I was up changing sheets and showering John. Jeremy slipped off to work in the morning and left John and I blissfully asleep in our bed. It was a school holiday, so I didn't have to get up to get James and Maggie ready for school. I was prepared to have a real "lie-in." Suddenly, James was in my face with a cheerful (and loud) "Good Morning, Mom!" Oh, did I hiss at him! I was irritated at being awakened, but even more afraid that he would wake up John. Still, my venom was undoubtedly magnified by being startled out of deep sleep, and out of proportion to the offense. I felt like a pretty lousy mom as I opened my eyes and watched James's face fall. He was just trying to be cheerful, after all, and when I looked at the clock, I was sheepish enough. The hour was well past a "lie in" and he did have a reasonable right to expect me up by 8:40!

Then there was the recent case of Maggie waking me up. It was during my worst week of illness, when I was sleeping 13-14 hours every day (which of course required some nap time). Thus, I had set up John and Maggie with a video and collapsed on the couch for a 30-minute nap. I was instantly pulled up out of sleep by a loud voice and a face right in mine - Maggie's. "Mom, the video isn't working right! Can you fix it right now?" No, I thought to myself miserably. I
can't even walk. If it isn't a fire in the house, I don't care. But Maggie wasn't going for this argument. Up I got, three different times in 45 minutes, to fix technology issues and sibling disputes over viewing material. So much for a nap.

So, I am seriously reconsidering the Open Door Policy at home. I think we may need a Sleep Codicil for Mom. If Mom is asleep, you must make do without waking her unless there is fire or severed artery. Will that win me any parenting awards? I think I am too tired to care.