David White, MD
A few years ago, while standing in my kitchen scanning the cupboards for a compelling snack, I heard the garage door open. A few moments later my teenage son walked through the kitchen with a slight scowl on his face, head bowed, vaguely responding to my greeting. This seemed to have become his general disposition as of late, and I felt it was an unwelcome imposition on the tone of our home. This seemed as good a time as any to address it.
“Son,” I spoke abruptly in an effort to halt his march. “Yeah?” he said dryly. I paused, smiled slightly, and began to pour forth my wisdom and counsel. I said, “Son, when you walk through the house without effort to offer the general courtesy of a greeting, it creates immediate separation. Further, your general attitude is a bit of a scowl lately and it makes you inaccessible relationally.” Feeling like I had done pretty well so far, my internal voice spoke…’David, that was really good. You may want to write that one down. Your son will likely be thanking you for that bit o’ wisdom here in a moment.’
My son lifted his head, locked my eyes in a gentle stare and said softly, in almost a whisper, “Dad, you are not particularly accessible either.”
My heart sank, for I saw it in his eyes, not defiance, but rather longing. A boy, nearly a man, expressing a desire to know his father and to be known by him. As I sought to better understand his experience of me, he explained, “Dad, what I really want is to build pillow forts with you. Not literally, of course, but when I think back to when you would strip all the pillows off the couches, beds, and chairs to build a fort with us boys, you were fully there, you were completely present with us. That doesn’t happen very often any more. You are really hard to know.”
His words struck me as both a rebuke and the sweetest of counsels. Yes, write that one down indeed.
The truth is that I’m not alone. We live in an age of perpetual interruption. We demand one another’s attention by text, chat, snap, post, like. And yet being known as we truly are is as elusive as ever, because it is so profoundly difficult to just be present, in ourselves, with others, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, words-to-ears. The magic of a pillow fort is not the imaginary world we are building. It is the reality that you and I are there, together, shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face, saying ‘no’ to all else that demands – not requires – our attention.
So do it. Yank the pillows off the couch… you know the rest.
