Stop Apologizing; I’m Not Listening
Every year my dad piled all of us into a station wagon and drove from California to Florida to visit his and my mother’s family. My sisters and myself thought it was a lark: three days riding in the backseat of the car, squabbling about everything, playing cards on the seat, eating at fast food joints, which were just starting to dot the highways.
We arrived every year in Florida, unannounced. My dad never informed anyone that he was coming to visit; we just appeared one day. The relatives loved it. We schlepped from house to house each night, sleeping on floors in sleeping bags, in barns on horse hay, on sofa’s enclosed in the mosquito-netted porch. We didn’t care where we slept. Not my dad nor the relatives were ever embarrassed about the sleeping arrangements, or showing up without notice. The relatives were glad to see us and they made room wherever they could. No one apologized if they really didn’t have room (they found room), their house was messy but not dirty, or if the house was in the midst of an illegal, added-on room. A room was a sleeping space, and we slept in several not-quite-finished back rooms with no window panes. My dad would lend a hand with construction.
He didn’t drive 3,000 miles to Florida to see the tidiness of someone’s house, their garden, or their new car. He drove to see people: his people, and my mother’s. We snapped beans, shelled peas, fed the chickens, cut sugar cane, and made sausages. We played in the tobacco barn, walked a mile down the country road with our cousins to the General Store for Coca Cola in 6 ounce glass bottles, and tried to ride my grandfather’s stubborn mule. The mule always won, and I got thrown. This was entertainment, and so different from our lives on the Coast. We were sheltered city dwellers from California. What did we know of rural America?
Later on, when I had dinner parties, and the food was burned or underdone or spiced wrong, I ordered out pizza. I learned that attitude from my dad. The food isn’t nearly as important as the people with whom you are sharing time. Food is replaceable, some people are not.
Should I be invited to visit you, do not apologize or point out the flaws of your house, or any untidiness therein, construction or otherwise. I don’t care. I didn’t come to see your house, your garden, or your car. I came to see you. My dad drove 3,000 on faith that someone would be glad to see him in Florida. He was never wrong.
That’s Aging Intelligently.