This, according to a 13-year-old girl giving a speech to an entire congregation, is one of the most frequent things her Mother has asked her over the years. “Did you feed the dog?” and then, not much later, the same question. The next day, “Did you feed the dog?” And on and on it went. The soundtrack of her time at home is variations of the theme, “Did you feed the dog?”
Only in hindsight was the girl able to appreciate what she surely, certainly, must have experienced with dread, eye-rolling and slumped-shouldered retreat to the chore as required. The pull from playing, from reading, from doing something, anything, that the girl had started to do, back to the realm of what she was supposed to do. The interruption of her own thoughts, her own plans, subsumed to those of her parents.
Only in hindsight did the girl realize that she was being taught how to care for something other than herself. That the nagging wasn’t for the (sole!) purpose of driving her crazy, but was to instill the ever-present sense that others have needs, too. That there is only one way to learn how to tend to another creature, and how to tend to ourselves, and that’s to have it modeled and then required of us, day in, day out.
Perhaps she’ll also come to see that she was being taught the very nature of love. We learn to brush our teeth daily, to put on fresh clothes, to clean our dishes, to take out the trash and recycling (and, if you’re in my area, the food waste), to do the most mundane of daily tasks, and that this forms the basis of how we love. We do things for our loved ones whether we want to or are in the mood for it; whether it is a grand statement of adoration or a lowly chore to help make home life more livable. Love, as I tell the people I work with, is not a noun or a vague feeling; it’s a verb. Love is the set of constant, relentless actions we take to meet another’s needs. Love is the keeping another in mind even as we unwind, or want to escape for a few minutes, or read a book, or play with our (grown-up) friends. We love ourselves through relentless self-care. We love others the same way. We are kind when we’d rather be rude and snippy; we forgive when we’d prefer to punish with grudges; we accept weakness but focus on the strength. We remember to feed the dog.
Only when this girl is a mother in her own right will she understand that the constant reminding is exactly the way she was loved by her parents. That when she’s too tired to cook, she’ll still feed her child. When she’s too tired to read a bedtime story, she’ll probably read a few pages anyway. That when she doesn’t have much of anything left over to give, she’ll give it. She will worry and ask and wonder if she’s done all she can that day, then go to sleep and wake up and do it all over again.
What will my son’s soundtrack be? Some combination of “Did you brush your teeth?” and “If you finish putting things away completely the first time, you wouldn’t have to go back and do it again.” I hope his soundtrack is also filled with my laughter, my “Thank you, honey” for when he follows through on things, my “I love you” and “Thanks for a great day” and “I will take you anywhere” in response to his adaptability and good humor when we go someplace new. But this is just self-serving, as there’s no reason to believe that the 13-year-old girl’s mother didn’t pepper her daily barrage of chore reminders with love reminders. She ended her speech by thanking her parents, telling them how much she loved them.
John Gottman, a psychologist who has studied what makes couples successful (by actually studying couples in a research lab, set up like an apartment, so he can monitor their heart rates and galvanic skin responses and correlate their physical well-being to the audio-tape and videotape of every utterance, every embrace, every eye-roll, every dismissive glance, every smile, every grimace ...), has noticed that couples who stay together have a 5:1 ratio of supportive/ loving statements to complaints. Complaints are so difficult to hear that they require an overwhelming counterbalance of acceptance, respect and love.
There are days when I surely fall short of the 5-to-1 ratio. I can see it in my son’s eye-rolling, slumped-shouldered sense of being burdened by yet another chore reminder. He doesn’t experience this as a life-long lesson in how to demonstrate and express love. He doesn’t even know he has to learn how to love. He thinks he will go on forever being loved in the way parents love children, and being able to love others the way children love their parents. If he’s too tired to express love, he doesn’t. He just falls asleep. He doesn’t really have to do much yet (other than take out the trash, put his laundry away, brush his teeth, do his homework, set and clear the table, help unload groceries from the car...). Hmmm. He is doing a lot already.
So here’s to making a soundtrack with 5 strains of love, warmth, acceptance, reminders of just how much we value him, and one nagging musical overlay reminder to do the mundane, boring, sometimes unpleasant tasks that build the foundation of sustainable love. A soundtrack to accompany acts of love that he performs not only when he feels like it, but when he’d rather not.
Only in hindsight was the girl able to appreciate what she surely, certainly, must have experienced with dread, eye-rolling and slumped-shouldered retreat to the chore as required. The pull from playing, from reading, from doing something, anything, that the girl had started to do, back to the realm of what she was supposed to do. The interruption of her own thoughts, her own plans, subsumed to those of her parents.
Only in hindsight did the girl realize that she was being taught how to care for something other than herself. That the nagging wasn’t for the (sole!) purpose of driving her crazy, but was to instill the ever-present sense that others have needs, too. That there is only one way to learn how to tend to another creature, and how to tend to ourselves, and that’s to have it modeled and then required of us, day in, day out.
Perhaps she’ll also come to see that she was being taught the very nature of love. We learn to brush our teeth daily, to put on fresh clothes, to clean our dishes, to take out the trash and recycling (and, if you’re in my area, the food waste), to do the most mundane of daily tasks, and that this forms the basis of how we love. We do things for our loved ones whether we want to or are in the mood for it; whether it is a grand statement of adoration or a lowly chore to help make home life more livable. Love, as I tell the people I work with, is not a noun or a vague feeling; it’s a verb. Love is the set of constant, relentless actions we take to meet another’s needs. Love is the keeping another in mind even as we unwind, or want to escape for a few minutes, or read a book, or play with our (grown-up) friends. We love ourselves through relentless self-care. We love others the same way. We are kind when we’d rather be rude and snippy; we forgive when we’d prefer to punish with grudges; we accept weakness but focus on the strength. We remember to feed the dog.
Only when this girl is a mother in her own right will she understand that the constant reminding is exactly the way she was loved by her parents. That when she’s too tired to cook, she’ll still feed her child. When she’s too tired to read a bedtime story, she’ll probably read a few pages anyway. That when she doesn’t have much of anything left over to give, she’ll give it. She will worry and ask and wonder if she’s done all she can that day, then go to sleep and wake up and do it all over again.
What will my son’s soundtrack be? Some combination of “Did you brush your teeth?” and “If you finish putting things away completely the first time, you wouldn’t have to go back and do it again.” I hope his soundtrack is also filled with my laughter, my “Thank you, honey” for when he follows through on things, my “I love you” and “Thanks for a great day” and “I will take you anywhere” in response to his adaptability and good humor when we go someplace new. But this is just self-serving, as there’s no reason to believe that the 13-year-old girl’s mother didn’t pepper her daily barrage of chore reminders with love reminders. She ended her speech by thanking her parents, telling them how much she loved them.
John Gottman, a psychologist who has studied what makes couples successful (by actually studying couples in a research lab, set up like an apartment, so he can monitor their heart rates and galvanic skin responses and correlate their physical well-being to the audio-tape and videotape of every utterance, every embrace, every eye-roll, every dismissive glance, every smile, every grimace ...), has noticed that couples who stay together have a 5:1 ratio of supportive/ loving statements to complaints. Complaints are so difficult to hear that they require an overwhelming counterbalance of acceptance, respect and love.
There are days when I surely fall short of the 5-to-1 ratio. I can see it in my son’s eye-rolling, slumped-shouldered sense of being burdened by yet another chore reminder. He doesn’t experience this as a life-long lesson in how to demonstrate and express love. He doesn’t even know he has to learn how to love. He thinks he will go on forever being loved in the way parents love children, and being able to love others the way children love their parents. If he’s too tired to express love, he doesn’t. He just falls asleep. He doesn’t really have to do much yet (other than take out the trash, put his laundry away, brush his teeth, do his homework, set and clear the table, help unload groceries from the car...). Hmmm. He is doing a lot already.
So here’s to making a soundtrack with 5 strains of love, warmth, acceptance, reminders of just how much we value him, and one nagging musical overlay reminder to do the mundane, boring, sometimes unpleasant tasks that build the foundation of sustainable love. A soundtrack to accompany acts of love that he performs not only when he feels like it, but when he’d rather not.
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