There is a little boy in my daughter Amma’s fifth-grade class named Tommy. Tommy never brings in his homework, so the kids never earn the class reward promised to them if they all comply. Tommy falls asleep in class repeatedly, and the teacher has to stop to wake him, which interrupts her lessons and makes her cranky. Amma is baffled by Tommy.
Amma walked in the door after school the other day, threw her book bag down on the floor, and said, “Again! He forgot his homework again! We are never going to earn our pizza party, never! Why can’t he just do what he’s supposed to do?”
Thankfully, I remembered the power of imagination.
ME: This is frustrating.
AMMA: I know!
ME: Babe, why do you imagine Tommy might not do his homework?
AMMA: Because he is irresponsible.
ME: Okay. Do you think that you’re responsible?
AMMA: Yes. I am. I always do my homework and I never fall asleep in class. I would NEVER do that.
ME: Okay. How did you learn to always get your homework done?
AMMA: You taught me to do it right after school. And you remind me every day!
ME: Okay. Do you imagine that Tommy has parents at home who can sit down with him and make sure his homework is done like yours do?
AMMA: He must not.
ME: Also, baby, why do you imagine Tommy is so tired during the day?
AMMA: He must stay up too late.
ME: How late do you imagine you’d stay up at night if you didn’t have us at home making you go to bed?
AMMA: I’d stay up all night!
ME: What do you imagine might happen to you during the day?
AMMA: I’d probably fall asleep a lot.
ME: Yeah. Maybe you and Tommy aren’t all that different after all. You’re responsible, Amma. But you’re also really lucky.
Amma still gets annoyed at Tommy, but she has her imagination to keep her soft and open. She knows how to imagine her way into his shoes. I’m not sure it matters if what she imagines is true. I just know that the softening matters. She is learning how to use her imagination to bridge the gap between her experience and the experience of another, and this skill will serve her, her relationships, and the world. I think a kid who practices imagining why a classmate keeps forgetting his homework might become an adult who can imagine why a father might risk everything to cross a desert with nothing but his child on his back.
Dear Glennon,
My teenage daughter just called us from her boarding school and told us that she’s gay. We are happy for her. We believe that love is love. My problem is this: My parents are staying at our home for Christmas. They are fundamentalists who I know will spend the holiday trying to shame and “convert” her. How do I handle this?
Respectfully,
M
Dear M,
When Abby and I fell in love, we kept it to ourselves for a while. Then, when we decided to build a life together, we began to share our relationship with others: our children, our parents, our friends, the world. People had big feelings about our news. Sometimes their responses would make me feel afraid, defensive, angry, too exposed.
One night, Abby, who knows I understand life best through metaphors, said this:
“Glennon, I want us to think of our love as an island. On our island is you, me, the kids—and real love. The kind of love novels are written about and people spend lifetimes trying to find. The holy grail. The most precious thing. The thing. We have it. It’s still young and new, so we’re going to protect it. Imagine that we’ve surrounded our island with a moat filled with alligators. We will not lower the drawbridge to let anyone’s fear onto our island. On our island is only us and love. Leave anything else on the other side of the moat. Over there, it can’t hurt us. We’re here, happy on our island. Let them scream fear or hate, whatever. We can’t even hear it. Too much music. Only love in, babe.”
Every time an internet troll, journalist, or fundamentalist minister shared self-righteous judgment, I’d smile and imagine his tomato-red face screaming on the other side of the moat, while Abby, the kids, and I kept dancing on our island. None of it could touch us. But things got more complicated when my best friend, my champion, my mother showed up on the other side of the moat, carrying fear in both her hands, asking us to lower the drawbridge.
My mother lives in Virginia and we live in Florida, but we talk every single day. We are intricately intertwined in each other’s lives. Recently we were talking before bed, and she asked about my plans for the following morning. I mentioned that I had a haircut scheduled and I was thinking about getting bangs. We said good night. The next morning, my phone rang at 6:00.
“I’m sorry to call so early, sweetheart, but I’ve been up all night worrying. It’s the bangs, honey. You don’t do well with bangs. You cut them and then you regret them, and it becomes a whole thing. Your life is stressful enough already. I am just worried that bangs are the wrong decision for your family, sweetheart.”
If my decision to get bangs had kept my mother up all night, you can imagine her reaction to my decision to divorce my husband and marry a woman. I could hear her fear in every question and in the long silences between her questions. But what about the kids? What will their classmates say? The world can be cruel. She was shaken, and that started to shake me. That day she told me not to get bangs? I didn’t. My mother loves me very, very well, so I’ve always trusted her to know what was right for me.
It’s not the cruel criticism from folks who hate us that scares us away from our Knowing; it’s the quiet concern of those who love us. My mom’s fear started to pull me away from my Knowing. I lost my peace. I became defensive and angry. I spent weeks on the phone with her, explaining myself, trying to convince her that I knew what I was doing and that it would all be okay. One night I was talking to my sister, working myself up, replaying to her my most recent conversation with my mom. My sister interrupted me and said, “Glennon, why are you so defensive? Defensiveness is for people who are afraid that what they have can be taken from them. You are a grown-ass woman. You can have what you want. No one can take this from you. Not even Mom. This is yours, Glennon. Abby is yours.”
We hung up, and I thought: My mother loves me. And she disagrees with me about what is best for me. I am going to have to decide who I trust more: my mother or myself. For the first time in my life, I decided to trust myself—even though that meant moving in direct opposition to my parents. I decided to please myself instead of my parents. I decided to become responsible for my own life, my own joy, my own family. And I decided to do it with love.
That is when I became an adult.
That night I told Abby, “I’m not going to spend one more second explaining myself or justifying our relationship. Explaining is fear preparing its case, and we are not on trial. No one can take what we have. I can’t convince my parents that we’re okay by talking incessantly about how okay we are. I think the only way to convince anybody you are okay is just to go about being okay and let them witness it. I don’t want to leave our island to be an evangelist for us anymore. It’s too tiring, and every time I go and try to convince other people that we’re fine, I’m not here, with you—being fine. So I’m adding a sign to our island. This one isn’t facing outward at the world, it’s pointing inward, toward us, as a reminder. It says: ‘Only Love Out.’ ”