Are you an “I love you” family? How do you say “I love you?” Do you tell members of your family you love them, or do you show them? Or both?
Joe Posnanski says he’s not from an “I love you” family. Love was certainly present in his home as he grew up, but his parents were “practical” people who may not have always told their son they loved him because, as he says, it was so “obvious” that they did.
Now, as a father of two daughters, he’s discovering love can be expressed “one note” at a time.
June 15, 2014
One Note
by Joe Posnanski
joeposnanski.com
We were not an “I love you family” when I was growing up. We knew families that were, of course, knew of parents who punctuated every phone conversation with “I love you,” knew of children who could not go out to play without first shouting “Bye! I love you!” into an empty hallway on the assumption it would float toward a family member’s ears. We certainly found such affection lovely. We just didn’t do it.
I’m not sure I can explain the reason we did not verbalize; love was certainly at the core of my childhood. It was everywhere. I guess that cuts close to the heart of why we didn’t talk about it — there is something decidedly practical about my parents. I think saying “I love you,” was viewed as overkill, not unlike saying “Don’t forget to breathe at school today,” or “be sure to put one foot in front of the other when you walk.” Or maybe, more than a concern about overkill, it was a stubborn refusal to be obvious. Love was to be seen in every hard-earned compliment, in every fair punishment, in every one of those thousand movies my mother took me to see, in the very act of my father getting up before dawn to go to the factory and in every game of catch he found the energy to play in the afternoon.
I think the message, if there was a message, was that recognizing love was as important as expressing it.
Funny thing is, I grew up and my own family became the “I love you” family of all time…
Read more at http://joeposnanski.com/one-note/
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