Not Extraneous

I'm standing in that unused space between the kitchen and the raised dining room with the fake parquet floor. In front of me is a waist-high set of black wire shelves where my dad keeps the detritus of his day - wallet, plastic coin pouch that he squeezes to open, bits of paper with notes about Jesus being Lord and yesterday's lotto numbers. And he's yelling at me:

"Extraneous details! I don't need extraneous details!"

I'm 7 or 11 or 9, and he can't name my school teachers, my favorite cartoons, or the friend at whose house I just slept over. All those details I try to tell him about my days or my nights, in that winding and never-to-the-point way of children's stories, are cut off with a scolding that I am drowning him in a wash of tiny, impertinent minutiae. Points so fine you'd think he'd been stabbed.   

I feel shrunken and unimportant, like a once-intricate wax figure melted down into a blob of generalities. 

7-year-old me

So when my son launches into yet another interminable and confusing story about a video game that's his latest obsession, recalling origins and feuds and connections I find irritating and exhausting, something deep inside my brain makes a growling noise. It takes all my will not to yell out, "I don't care about this! Get to the point or BE QUIET!" 

And I realize maybe my dad wasn't exactly wrong about extraneous details. And that fills me with rage so hot my face flushes, because I don't want him to be right about anything. 

My dad and I had a troubled relationship full of contradictions. He thought he did the best he could do while raising me; I did not agree - not then, and certainly not now that I am a parent. Almost everything I saw him do, from refusing to admit or treat his mental illness to deliberately driving a wedge between his children, serves as a stark example of behavior I want to avoid.

As a child, hearing my father tell me that the details of my life and thoughts didn't matter to him was like a backhand to the face. To me, life was all details. And my dad was forcefully rejecting them.

Kids thrive on details, and I was no different. I lived in the weeds of my own life, my vibrant imagination and expanding interactions with the world. At that age I hadn't gained the experience to know what really matters in a story versus what doesn't - honestly, I'm still learning that and I've passed 40. 

For me to agree with him now about something that was so hurtful to me as a child scrapes my nerves raw. The fact that I am suddenly empathizing with him about being overwhelmed by my kid's details feels like a flashing orange danger sign, like I'm deliberately choosing a path I know will end in destruction. Estrangement is a road that veers off in small degrees but ends miles away. 

And yet, friends and strangers regularly commiserate about the unique torture that is listening to kids trying to explain their interests to their parents. Certainly I'm not alone now, and I realize my dad wasn't alone then.

  

So maybe my dad was right about struggling under the onslaught of details. But his response was all wrong. 

Instead of raising his voice to his child, regularly telling her that all the tiny parts of her life don't matter, he should have recognized that love is in the details. Knowing which friend was currently my favorite, which teacher I was struggling with, and what were my current interests are unspoken I love you's. There are so many ways to tell a child that she matters. My dad didn't do enough of them.  

The next time I'm sitting at a stoplight on the drive home from school and my son is 10 minutes deep into a description of

Here's one thing that makes Purple not useless one bit: Purple just arrived at a vent close to you, and you're like I'll just walk away, and Green's coming down the hallway where you're trying to get away from then Orange breaks down the door like and Green's coming for you and there's no way to escape so you unbox and run away from Green then Orange breaks down the door, he sees you, then you have to get across Purple's vents because there's a specific kind of pattern in it and you have to follow it which gives Orange the advantage because he's a Rainbow Friend, he doesn't even have to cross a pattern, you can either keep your box on and let Green get rid of you or you can unbox and try to run away crossing, I mean, running away while Orange comes running at you and the only way to get away from that is if there's a table right there because a table is a hiding spot so if Orange needs to go under there, that doesn't do anything, he just runs up to the tables like where'd he go and just walks away so you can escape every single Rainbow Friend there, you can just run under the table and you can troll them all you want, for Orange you can just, then for Orange you can just keep running down a long hallway and then you can show yourself and he's like coming at you and you'll back in over and over and over but for Purple there's only one way to do that, if another Rainbow Friend sees you and is coming for you that's the only way to get away from Purple is if another Rainbow Friend is coming.* 

I will take a deep breath and remind myself that even though this video game doesn't matter to me - in fact, I find it endlessly annoying - it matters to him, and I should be thankful that my son wants to share his interests with me. I won't discourage that. 

Because if your child doesn't feel welcome to share the (not extraneous) details, he won't want to share the big things with you, either. 

This I know. 

*an actual conversation with my son