« Experiment: Day Twenty | Main | Congratulations to our July 2008 Showcase WRITERS! »
May 25, 2008
Experiment: Day Twenty-One
Except for a few early years, I grew up alone with my mom. And seeing as she went straight from a high school cap-and-gown to a wedding dress, she still had plenty of growing up to do while I was growing up, so that worked out pretty well. She also "became enlightened" while I was still a child, tuning in to all things Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and Unity Church and Reiki Healing and A Course in Miracles. In addition to being a Montessori kid, I'm the product of a New Age household. Tarot Cards, Viking Runes, real-live psychic friends. Yup.
As much as Mom and I would make fun of Born-Again Christians (sorry, Born-Again Christians. It's true. We made fun of you--especially the super, psycho-hypocritical ones to whom we're related), we were made fun of by those who similarly didn't understand what we were doing: opening our chakras, meditating, visualizing peace in our lives, using the position of the stars and planets to determine what kind of experience we were going to have in life.
But the coolest part of "growing up with my mom" has nothing to do with anything I've mentioned thus far in this post (I don't think) and has everything to do with what was at the core of every moment we shared, both as "kids" and "adults" in our lives together. We loved to talk. We loved to analyze. We loved to hypothesize and wonder about things and discuss options about why things and people were the way they were and how that mattered in the larger scope of this "life" thing we experience for such a short period of our soul's time.
In college, I would take a "skills assessment exam" as a part of becoming an academic peer tutor (so that I could understand the seven different primary strengths that were the ways that my students might learn things) and learn that I was primarily an "interactive learner," meaning I don't GET IT until I discuss it. I have to share it in order to process it. (Sure as shit explains my need to journal--and later, to blog--about every damn thing, eh?) My secondary learning style is "visual," meaning once I see it, I get it. That's FAR more typical for "smart kids" than the "interactive learner" score. And even more common than either of those two, for my peers, was "print learning." Nope. Not me. I actually scored lower as a "print learner" than as a "tactile learner," meaning I GET IT if I FEEL IT with my hands before I GET IT from reading it. (Again, with the irony, considering how much I must read as a part of my job(s), eh?)
Anyway, when I came home one weekend from college and talked with my mom about being an "interactive learner," she was fascinated and decided that that was true for her as well. That she could talk and "yes, and" with people all day long and suddenly understand something better. And this is not the same as "auditory learning," where you hear it and understand it. This is, "I gots to TALK TO YOU about it to really GET IT" kind of learning.
There was one point in our lives together, much later--like after I moved back to Hollywood after grad school--at which Mom sent me an email about that day's phone conversation (some kids don't like to talk to Mom every day. Honestly, I could've never hung up the phone with that woman and I would've been just fine) and signed off with the words:
I am never finished talking with you.
I weep as I type that. It was always such a wonderful thing to get to talk about ANYTHING, EVERYTHING with my Mom. And we NEVER ran out of stuff. Never. I know so many people who don't (who can't, who won't) have such a relationship with their mother, so I know--despite the hard times we faced together for many years there on our own together--we had it SO good.
Cut to: A few years after Mom passed away. My dear Cousin Faith and I had had one of our marathon phone sessions (this was before she moved away to NY to do her kickass radio show; we were actually neighbors, but still could only--sometimes--find time to chat on the phone or via email) and she said, before we finally used crowbars to make ourselves hang up: "I swear, Bon, I am just never finished talking with you."
How could she know?
And today I am grateful for my husband and my Annas (three of 'em; all of whom qualify as really, truly, besties) and even for my not-nearly-often-enough (but dammit, isn't it GOOD when it happens) friends with whom I'll share the same sentiment. With the right people, with the ones who GET YOU, with the ones you want to get you... there is never a period in the conversation. Only commas. Only semi-colons. Only ellipses (and only the good kind. Not the ones that leave anything out).
Wow. I'm just so glad to have people in my life with whom I can soak in that ability to learn, that hunger for information, that quest for laughter, that delight in LANGUAGE, that bliss that is SHARING! Just... wow.
Day Twenty-One:
I am grateful for communication.
(What is the Experiment? It is this.)
Posted by bonnie at May 25, 2008 5:44 PM