That’s where you live!

Where we live is more than a place

Our son Grant gives wonderful bear hugs. He often pulls me in close to his over-six-foot frame and croons, “That’s where you live!”

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, but you can also tell a lot by knowing where they live—and I don’t just mean which city or house they live in. In college, I tired quickly of the standard trio of introductory questions: “What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your major?” I have to admit that knowing where people were from provided at least a small dot on my mental map and it did tell me something about them—if they had cold winters, if they grew up by the ocean, or if they were city people or country folks. What it did not explain, though, is what kind of home they lived in. Even a photo of their home and family couldn’t really tell me where they were from.

My dad used to say that to really get to know people you needed to sit at their table and share a meal together. Somehow, breaking bread with people helps barriers go down and gives us a pulse on the true rhythm of a family. Through the years, Ken and I have hosted meals for hundreds of people who, like it or not, have learned where we “live.” They’ve seen us wait to start eating until everyone is served and we've blessed the food. They’ve been teased unexpectedly by Ken, and often at the end of the meal they’ve seen our grown sons plopping onto his lap. They’ve also seen the boys laugh as quickly as they fight while KaRynn tries in vain to push away one brother or another who insists on snuggling up to her at the table. They’ve overheard me remind our children to put napkins on their laps, take their elbows off the table, and put butter on their plates before spreading it on their bread. On our better days, they’ve engaged with us in good, old-fashioned table conversations.

I especially like having our children’s friends eat with us. It doesn’t take too many meals for them to get a pretty good sense of what we value and how we roll. Knowing where they “live,” on the other hand, is a little trickier. As play dates turn into teenage hangouts, parents are often instructed, “Just drop me off here.” So, instead of going inside to meet the parents and take in the surroundings, we have to enlist other reconnaissance strategies. 

Carpooling, for instance, has its headaches, but it also has its own magic. That’s right. Sometimes a parent-driver can actually become invisible! With a little luck, kids become so caught up in their own conversations that they actually forget a parent is in their midst. Consequently, driving can be very informative. I’ve learned what music is cool and which sports teams are winning or losing, but I’ve also learned more important things like what kind of work kids do around the house, how well they get along with their siblings, and whose parents have high academic expectations. 

For better or for worse, I haven’t had to carpool much since I earned the mothering perk of having a teenage driver, so I’ve learned to look for other ways to learn about my kids’ friends. The best way, of course, is to build a parent network. Not long ago I went to lunch with the mother of one of my son’s friends where we had a lovely mom-to-mom conversation, but going eating out too frequently isn’t very practical, at least for me. Sometimes just calling other parents for an occasional check-in is helpful, but one of the best ways to learn I’ve found to learn about other kids is by keeping my ear to the ground at school sporting events. For some reason, that’s where parents seem to really loosen up. Their language alone can be quite indicative of where some of these kids “live.”

In a few weeks, Grant will leave for college, and I will dearly miss those bear hugs reminding me where I live. What’s more, without him around I won’t have a teenage driver, so I’ll be back in the carpooling seat, listening to my boy and his friends the best I can. I wonder if anyone will notice.