The most precious words

Why is it so hard to say those three words, words that heal, comfort and give us safety and protection?

While reading Elizabeth Strout’s wonderful novel “My Name Is Lucy Barton”, I couldn’t help wondering about my own relationship with my mother, and about the relationship she has with her mother, and so on, back and back without end.

What kept going round in my head throughout the whole novel was why is it so hard to say those three words, words that heal, comfort and give us safety and protection.

Why did generation after generation of our parents, their parents and their parents’ parents grow up being taught not to show tender feelings towards their own children, let alone say those three words that are so hard and yet so important.

The most precious words, which many children (me included) can feel, yet still long to hear from the mouths of the most important people in their world: their parents.

I love you.

Why is it easy for us to say those same words to our grandchildren, for us to say them to our children, even to friends, but not so easy to our parents?

Even when we manage to get them out, we often don’t get the answer we expected, the answer we need.

As if they were made of lead, or forbidden…

Like saying “Voldemort”, as if just saying them out loud breaks their magic and the feeling disappears?

I was recently talking about exactly this with a very good friend who is a little younger than me. He said: “I have always felt loved, but to this day I have never heard my parents say the words ‘I love you’.”

And that’s when I realised we were talking about a universal problem.

What is it about the war and post-war generations, the boomers and all the generations before us millennials, that makes people keep such loud silence about their feelings?

Men, on the other hand, were raised not to show any feelings at all, and certainly not sadness, because that is a sign of weakness, you’re less of a man if you say you’re sad, and God forbid you shed a tear.

I remember when my grandpa’s brother died. I was no more than fifteen (so, not that little). He was sitting in the living room, trying to hold back the tears that were coming. He didn’t manage and started to sob.

My grandma immediately told him off: “For God’s sake, pull yourself together, the children are watching.”

He just said: “Oh, come on, my brother has died.”

That was the first and only time I saw him cry.

I couldn’t understand why my grandma told him off, because I can’t even imagine the state I would have been in in his place.

The very thought that you have to push all those feelings down frightened me.

Now, after so many years and countless situations in which others were expected to hold back their feelings because “what will people say”, I still can’t understand: why?

Why is it socially unacceptable to express perfectly human feelings, sadness as well as love?

I’m not saying that people who can’t bring themselves to say those three magic words don’t love their loved ones or their children, far from it.

Why is society woven together in such a way that it feels as if the world will fall apart if you tell your own child “I love you”?

Elizabeth Strout’s book, and many films too, confirm the theory that this is a global problem.

The wonderful series “Trying”, which I wholeheartedly recommend, deals with exactly this in one of its episodes.

The main character tries to tell his father that he loves him, but he can’t find the right words. They both find it hard to get the words out, so in the end they use football analogies to tell each other how much they love each other, but right to the end they don’t manage to say the words themselves.

It’s hard, I know. Oh, how well I know.

To be honest, I’m not even sure how many times in my life I have said “I love you” to my own parents.

I tell Sofka every day, so often that she says to me, half annoyed: “I know, Mum, you tell me every day.”

When I tell Sofka “I love you”, it is as easy as breathing air.

But when I have to turn to my mother and say the very same words, they hang in the air, heavy as lead, impossible to get over my tongue.

I grew up in a happy, harmonious family. There wasn’t a day when I didn’t feel safe and loved, both by my parents and by my grandma and grandpa.

But however hard I try, I can’t remember ever explicitly hearing the words “I love you”. “We’re proud of you” I heard countless times, along with other tender words. But not “I love you”.

On the other hand, the fact that I don’t remember them doesn’t mean they were never said. But they weren’t said often enough to stay in my memory.

I don’t blame anyone, and I don’t want to judge.

I want to understand.

I want to help us understand it, to open the valve and practise together getting those difficult words out, until they become easy.

Because I know the feelings are there.

Sofia hears them every day.

So I know they are possible, that they are there.

Let’s say them to each other. While we can, while we are here, because when someone is gone, it is too late.

And those are usually the moments when we realise we didn’t say them enough, and all we are left with is the hope that the person who is gone knew we loved them. And they probably did, but is that enough?

So, to avoid spending your life in regret and wondering what might have been, however prosaic it may sound: call your parents, your children, and stay on the phone for as long as it takes, but get those words out.

I promise it will get easier every time.

And I am also pretty sure that the benefits and the quality of a relationship are so much better when that hard but so important “I love you” is in the air.

Warmly,

S-Mama