Family Phone Call

I had good conversations with my parents last night. This doesn't always happen. I call every Sunday, but sometimes there's just not a lot to talk about and conversation settles on the weather and other such mundane details. It's never awkward (I can't really relate to my roommates' difficulties talking to their dads on the phone), but we rarely talk for very long (I also can't relate to my roommate who knows that if her mom gets on the phone she's in for an hour-long conversation). It's generally just nice to make contact with my family, for us to check up on each other and know the important things that are going on in our lives.

But sometimes these phone conversations are really good, and after last night I just felt deeply grateful for my parents.

Sometimes it's interesting for me to look at how my relationships with my dad and mom are different. In general (though not always) my best conversations with my mom center on me, my frustrations and how I'm feeling about things in general. She gives advice and assures me that my problems aren't really that bad, and she's usually right. And even though more often than not I stubbornly refuse to accept what she's saying because really I just want to be confused and frustrated, I always feel better after talking to her anyway. She laughed at me last night when I kept countering everything she said with, "Yes, but..." "You're funny, Leibniz" she said. "You spend so much time analyzing things, and you have every detail figured out, when really it's just that a lot of life is due to chance and circumstance." And as much as I like things to make sense, she's right, and it's probably good for me to recognize (and be okay with) the randomness that life throws at me.

With my dad, on the other hand, good conversations revolve around things outside of myself. I sort of see my mom's conversations as inward-outward - start with something very personal and then explore what lies out side of that. With my dad, they're outward-inward - start with something outside of ourselves, something circumstantial that we can both relate to, and then discuss how we handle and think about such things. Last night the conversation took off when we began talking about someone we're both concerned about, who has been struggling for several months, about what the problem is, what can and should be done, what is standing in our way of helping this person.

It was not necessarily an encouraging conversation because basically the conclusion was that we were both frustrated and unsure what to do because you cannot make someone see what you have learned to see, or know what you have learned and decided on your own. But I still hung up the phone feeling good, and I think it was because talking with my dad gave me a glimpse into the source and strength of his faith, and allowed me to express my own faith to him. And even though my dad and I are quite different in some ways, it made me feel good to know, to experience, that we stand very firmly on common ground in this one most important part of life.