Authors: Beatrice Sparks
Saturday, October 1, 7
A.M.
Telephone Conversation
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old
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“Yo, Dr. B. I know you're really busy and all like that but⦔
“But what, favorite friend Sammy?”
“I need to talk to you. I've
got
to talk to you before you meet again with the family.”
“Do you feel comfortable talking aboutâ¦whateverâ¦on the phone?”
“Yeah. I guess it would be as humiliating and shameful one way as the other. It'sâ¦it's aboutâ¦my dad. I can't believe I told you so many unforgivable things about him. Liesâ¦liesâ¦lies all of them.”
I interrupted, “Now wait a minute, Sammy, you're being unfair to yourself. I heard him say what
he
had done to you.”
“I deserved it. Every bit of it.”
“Whooooa, boy. Don't you think you both were out of control at the time?”
“But I made things sound a million, trillion, zillion times worse than they were. I wanted to hurt him make you think heâ¦you know⦔
“Okay. So that maybe wasn't the smartest or the kindest thing you've ever done in your life. Are you going to be condemned forever for it? Isn't there one single way you can think of to smooth out
that
crinkle in your life as you've smoothed out all the others?”
“Wellâ¦maybeâ¦noâ¦. What do you think?”
“I not only think, I
know
you can do it by yourself, possibly, probably, you can do it even better by yourself. Then, not only will you have won the battle you will see yourself as the
winner
you are, always were, always will be!”
“What do you think about my making an appointment with Dad as soon as I get off the phone? We could go sit in the beanbag chairs under the bright light in the laundry room and I could deeply and sincerely tell him how I feel now. How does that strike you?”
“It strikes me as being a fantastically wonderful idea if it strikes you the same.”
“Do you think I should tell him aboutâ¦the impression I tried to leave with you so you'd hate him as much as I did, or should I just wipe that out of my mental computer? Could you do that, too?”
I closed my eyes and squinted them. “It's done!”
“Man, I can't believe how much better I feel. I thought finding a solution would be pretty near impossible and it wasn't all that difficult. Do you think he'll forgive me?”
“Do
you
think he'll forgive you?”
“I think he already has.”
“How are you coming with the forgiving yourself part?”
“Cinchy. Bye. See ya in a couple of hours, minus the garbage.”
“What garbage?”
Samuel, Paula, Lance, Dana,
Dorie Gordon Family Chart
Saturday, October 1, 9
A.M.
Twelfth Visit
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“Hi, Dana and Dorie. I've heard so much about you I almost feel like we've met before.”
Dana: “I'll bet it was all bad if it was from my buggy big brother.”
“Wrong! It was all good! I suspect that when he's around you he's too embarrassed to tell you how he
really
feels, so he's more comfortable teasing.”
“When he came home this last time he treated me and Dorie like we were angles, like we were perfect, like we didn't ever do anything wrong, like we
couldn't
do anything wrong.”
Sammy put his hand playfully over her mouth. “Enough already.”
Dorie chimed in, “Now he's back to his old self, mainly picking on us and trying to be the boss all the time.”
Paula put her finger to her lips. “Shhh, we're trying to impress Dr. Sparks with what a neat, nice, comfortable, healthy, normal, loving family we are.”
The kids giggled and assumed nervous, pious positions.
After they had all seated themselves, I asked, “Anyone want to tell me what's been happening in your lives?” They all started talking at once till I tinkled the little crystal bell. “Sammy, want to tell Dana and Dorie what that means?”
“It means we've started playing the Listening Therapy Game.”
“Will you tell the girls about the Listening Therapy Game rules?”
“Yeah. As you've seen, this family can't do without them, even when there are only two or three of us playing.”
Lance looked at Sammy and grinned widely.
“Whoever is talking gets to talk for two minutes if they want to. That's how long it takes the sand to run from the top half of the glass bottle into the bottom. During that time no one can interrupt,
comprendé?
” Sammy instructed.
“
SÃ
,” both girls answered in Spanish.
“Oh, I forgot practically the main thing. Everybody
has to listen
because maybe they'll be chosen to tell what's been said.”
Ten-year-old Dorie made a face and said, “Yucky.”
Sammy looked at me playfully. “Is yucky a toxic word?”
I shrugged. “For now, why don't we continue with the Listening Game. Paula, would you like to fill us in on how you've seen the last seven days?”
“Wellâ¦Lance came home with us after our last session, and we had dinner. Then he and the kids talked and played Scrabble, and I Doubt It till long past their bedtimes. Then Lance went back to his hotel, and the kids and I went to bed.”
It was obvious Paula was being very cautious about a situation she wasn't completely sure of.
Every part of Dorie's body had been fidgeting since Paula had first started speaking. Something inside her had almost a life of its own. Paula asked, “Can Dorie take the rest of the two minutes?”
“If she wants to.”
Dorie's words erupted every which way out of her mouth. “And Sunday morning Dad took us to McDonald's for breakfast. We all love sausage and Egg McMuffins and Mom won't let us have them often, and then we went to Sunday school, and up the canyon to see the leaves, and for a ride on the little old mine train, and we bought Mrs. Field's cookies, and went to lunch, and took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain so we could see the whole wide world below us, and we played we were the Von Trapp family in
The Sound of Music
and ran through the trees, trying to hide out from the bad people, and⦔
Sammy poked her and turned her face toward the timer. The last few straggly grains of sand were sifting through its narrow middle.
Dana raised her hand timidly. “Who gets to say what they said?”
We all pointed to her.
“Ummm, Mom said how nice and comfy and warm it was to have Dad home again. It was, in a way, like he'd never been away, even though I was little when he left and Dorie was almost a baby.”
Dorie: “Was not! I remember Daddy clear as anything, on my sixth birthday taking just the two of us on a
date
, andâ¦ooopsâ¦sorry.” She'd remembered the timer.
Dana: “We were like one of the old rerun TV families with everything sort of fairy-tale, they-lived-happily-ever-after-like and everything, just like Mom said. And I think, in a way, she wanted him to stay with us, but she didn't dare ask, and I think he, in a way, wanted to stay, and he didn't dare ask either.
“And Mom said sometimes Daddy played games
really dumb on purpose just so he could let us win. Seeing him be silly is almost the most fun part.”
I smiled. “It always astounds me how often people hear someone saying things they haven't said at all, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Dana, are you sure you were repeating just what your mom said?”
She thought for a second. “I think so, yeah.”
“Did the rest of you notice how much she added? Things that probably really did happen, or feelings that she had?”
Seriously, Paula, Lance, and Sammy all nodded their heads in the affirmative.
“People think listening is easy. It isn't! We often hear what we
want
to hear. For instance, Sammy, when you were angry with your dad, could you possibly have honestly
thought
you heard him say things that were
much worse than the things he really did say?
”
“I'm absolutely sure of that now!”
“Can anyone else think of other times when that might have happened?”
Dorie asked, “Are we using the timer?”
“No.”
Dorie: “Well, when Mom gets mad at me for not cleaning my room or doing my jobs around the house or something, I sometimes feel that she's calling me lazy and dumb and stuff. But then if I go in my room and cry or just think about it, I know she's just trying to get me to do what I should be doing without her having to nag. And I guess it's more like I'm calling myself lazy and stupid because I feel that's what I am.”
“Could you be trying to blame her for your problem?”
“Ummmâ¦yeah, in a way, I guess.”
“What might you do the next time something like that happens?”
“Maybe likeâ¦try a little harder to remember exactly what she really did say?”
“Do you think Listening Therapy could help all our lives?”
Everyone answered quietly and thoughtfully with, “Yeah, could be, I'm sure, uh-huh.”
“Anyone else got another example?”
Paula began talking softly, almost to herself. “When Sammy was gone, and I was mentally and physically and emotionally and spiritually at my wit's end, there were times when I'd think people were being overly critical or that they were thinking what an incompetent mother I was or something.”
“Now that you're mentally and physically and emotionally and spiritually well again, what are you hearing, not only from their verbal but from their nonverbal communication?” I asked.
“Only positive things. Well,
nearly
always positive things.”
“Have their communications changed?”
“No.”
“What has changed?”
“How I
listen
to what other people are saying, or trying to say, I guess.”
“Sometimes do you think it's more important to
listen
to what people
are trying to say
than to what they are actually saying?”
“Oh, yes, especially with children.”
“Dorie, if a four-year-old boy was playing in the sandbox and had his castle almost finished when his mom called and insisted that he come in the house
âright now', what do you think that little boy might think his mom was saying?”
“That he was making a stupid sand castle, and it wasn't important, and he wasn't important either?”
“What if his mom took the time to explain that it was getting dark and he could finish his magnificent castle perfectly in the morning and they'd take some pictures of
it
, the greatest structure ever built by man or boy in the history of mankind?”
“I think he'd think he was cool, and he'd probably come in.”
“Do you think what
we
say and
how
we say it, and the way people
listen
to what we say makes a difference?”
A unanimous “Yes.”
“Would you like to take home a Listening Therapy Game, so you can all, as family members, become more skilled at listening?”
Unanimous “Yes.”
“Okay, remind me to give some copies to you before you leave, in case I forget. Now just one more little exercise before we go on. Sammy, will you pass out this lined paper, and, Dorie, will you pass out the pencils? I'm going to give you some what-if questions. Remember, you're going to answer them as though you were listening intently to what he/she is TRYING TO SAY instead of what he/she is really saying. REMEMBER, THE QUESTION IS:
WHAT IS THE PERSON TRYING TO SAY?
What would you do if you found his/her family had been in a horrible accident and were all in the hospital in critical condition?