listening
Over the phone, I hear in Riley’s voice what I cannot see, the flush in her cheeks, the way she pushes imagined stray hairs away from her forehead, the way the tears spill and slide. Her words come out loud and rushing, like rapids overwhelming a dam.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, wanting her to feel in my voice all the things I know she needs–a hug, my smile, light kisses over wet trails along her cheekbones. Especially when distance means we’re not seeing and touching each other, I know I need to speak more carefully. I know I need to listen more carefully. Tell me, I say, and even though as the phone rang I had been absorbed with an errand and getting up to find my shoes, instead I find a quiet space to hear her out. It’s a small surrender, this shutting my mouth, this sitting down, this submission to interruption, but it comes more easily for me with Riley, where my mama heart is tender and tuned. She sniffles on the other end of the line, and I wait as she catches her breath, suddenly wondering how it would be if I listened for love even when engaging with someone who is not my flesh and blood, or someone who is not my friend, or someone who does not see the world the same way that I do.
“Well, I was trying to write down about the hand sanitizer, and…” She gushes on, a hurtling storm of emotion.
At school, they have responsibilities. Riley refills the hand sanitizer, but before that, she explains to me, she creates a checklist–a new one every day–about refilling the hand sanitizer. I smile when she tells me this, guessing that the checklist is a chore of Riley’s own creation instead of part of the actual job, some obsessive leaning toward over-doing. Riley thinks no job can be done well and thoroughly without a checklist, the boxes outlined five times and pressing hard, until whatever surface sits beneath the paper is actually dented with the memory of the list. To a relative degree I understand her compulsion, but on the other hand, I also find her views (and her behavior) extreme. This is Autism, of course, but a persistent part of me always resists the way obsession finally succeeds in making her abandon logic and practicality. I could stop her now–in fact, I really want to—and argue about the facts; I could talk about how it would save time and perhaps frustration (for all of us) were she not to make such a list every.single.day; I could point out that, in my view, she should not be so upset. This really is a small thing, I could say, because, from my emotionally removed position, these are the facts. But I don’t say any of that.
I remember something I heard Dr. Bryan Lorrits say, though he has also written about this and I’ve seen it quoted in multiple books by other authors, about how unloving and compassionless it is to communicate on the level of facts with someone who offers us the vulnerability of communicating honestly on the level of emotion. To love and listen well, we must return the gift and first respond emotionally and vulnerably ourselves.
I care about Riley’s feelings even when I don’t understand them, and I know what it means for her to express–in words–exactly how she feels. I remember a time when, unable to name her pain, our daughter simply fell apart. In those days, I fell apart with her, grieving suffering that she couldn’t explain and the I had no hope to understand. So, I just listen now as she tells her tale of woe, something about the innocent and repetitive interruption of a friend, how that kept her from finishing her checklist and ultimately from finishing her work on time, how in trying to balance responsibility and kindness, she gradually began to unravel. That unraveling, the slow crumbling toward panic, is the reason for the phone call from school.
I know the bones of this lament of hers like I know my own hand, but remembering something wise I read and learned recently about listening in Anjuli Paschall’s book, Stay, I try to listen for Riley now and not for me. If I listen for me, I listen toward the outcome I want, anticipating what I need to say to make it happen. I listen thinking about how I need her to be okay. But if I listen for her, I listen for love, sacrificing both my need to speak and my need to fix it the way I want to fix it. I honor her honesty. So stilling myself, I blank my mind and seal up my own words. I try to see Riley in that moment when she discovers she’s run out of time, when it pains her to feel rushed, when she imagines disappointing someone. I try to imagine the surge of anxiety, the trembling of her hands, the flood of oh no oh no oh no as she finds herself struggling again over things that have chased her for a lifetime, challenges she never asked for and doesn’t fully understand herself. I listen until the gush of her words trickles away, until she’s no longer gasping for breath, until I notice the end of her tears like the end of a rain, and until finally, I hear an unburdened lightness in her tone. She exhales, and it feels like letting go.
“It was just so annoying,” She says finally, in summary.
“I know. I hear you,” I say simply, and that seems to be enough. “That sounds really hard. Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes, I’m okay, Mom.” She says this without hesitation, but also with what sounds like a tiny hint of surprise.
Later, we’ll talk about facts.
