Growing Versions

Just a second... ...I'll be right there... ...in a minute...

Last night, as my son's restlessness and resistance to sleep intensified, I suggested "a talk".  Knowing that part of his challenge with falling asleep is letting go of the day and connection, I figured a talk would comfort him. He responded: "Well, we could talk about the problems for me at my old daycare." Me: "Okay, if you like." He changed his mind, "Or, we could talk about imagining things." Me: "That sounds like a great idea. You go first." "Carrots can talk to each other in the earth." "Monkeys can be camouflaged." "Geckos do not like to be touched but they like someone to talk to them." "Birds have special powers." "Okay, mom, it's your turn."

Writing down words, typing them, has really helped me say things out loud. Writing has broadened my vocabulary and like doing scales helps improve ones music, writing has strengthened my communication abilities. Those solid words, sometimes spurting out in rivulets, other times squeezed out in pebbles, give the words spoken into the air more shape. The audible ones are uttered with more confidence and chosen with more care. Words always used to trip me up, hold me back, create nets in which I would get tangled, and block communication.  Words would shroud me in heavy cloth that muted my real intent. By allowing myself permission to write through mistakes and sift through what's left, I'm also allowing myself to talk in the ways I want to, not out of fear or for purposes of crowd control or to manage my audience, but to speak, to communicate, to represent myself.

I am not known for being direct. I'm known for being so circuitously indirect it pains even my closest friends.  In fact, I have taken great care throughout my life to take the indirect route.  Rather than telling someone my opinion outright or deal with conflict head on, I've practically devised an art-form in feeling my audience out and saying, maybe not what is only expected of me, but saying it in the most palatable way possible.  It's down to culture, partly, and gender roles and family dynamics. However, all this changed when I had a child in my life.  It did not change completely, but substantially.  Almost right away and especially when I returned back to work, I noticed that I no longer skipped around the bush quite so automatically.  I suddenly did not have time for that any more. I literally had a fixed set of minutes within which everything had to begin and end.  There was no more time to pull taffy answers out of myself and others, I ne...