Willing to hear

I said something to my father that I wish, now, I had not said. I said a lot of things to my father I wish I had not said, but I am thinking of one in particular now. I think I said, "Pul-eeese." Or maybe I just rolled my eyes. Or maybe I just complained to other family members. I don't remember clearly just what I did, but I remember like it was this morning, how I felt. I felt incredulity and embarrassment and disdain.

Dad had Alzheimer's disease when he died. He had been living a life of mental impairment for years before that. And a life of emotional empairment even before his good mind began to go bad. I mention that because when Dad said something that struck me as odd or silly, or even childish, there were several ways to explain it. But however you explain it, there is still a person under whatever explanation you come up with. I remembered that sometimes, but on this occasion, I did not.

As Dad got older and less capable, he spent more time watching daytime soap operas. I've never had much appreciation for soaps and I didn't understand why he was wasting his time on them. The idea that he had more time than he knew what to do with and was just burning up some of it never occurred to me. Dad must have felt a little self-conscious about it too because one day, he offered an explanation. "Some of these shows," he said, "have a deep philosophy." I think I would have had trouble with that statement no matter how he made it, but in this sentence, he pronounced philosophy, "Phee-los-o-pheee." It is something he did with words sometimes, giving them what he imagined to be their "original" or "correct" pronunciations. I think when he got it right, it sounded "cultured" to him and he liked that.

I dismissed his statement as silliness and I let him know, one way or another, that I had dismissed it. I wish I hadn't.

I'm currently in the middle of an essay on the movie, The Joneses. I like it a great deal better than anyone I've talked to about it and better than anyone I've read about it. I'm seeing connections now that I missed entirely the first few times. KC, the supervisor of the stealth marketing unit is unhappy with Steve Jones's (David Duchovny) sales and challenges him, "The question is, 'How far are you willing to go to get what you want?'" Steve Jones is willing to go quite far indeed. He blows up the whole marketing unit so he can have a chance at a "real" (not pretend) relationship with his fellow actor "Kate Jones," (Demi Moore). I don't think that's what KC had in mind. And now, hearing it again and hearing her admonish Steve about "how far he is willing to go" just seems really funny to me.

I'm seeing events that occur in my own life as "just like that interaction in The Joneses, you know, the one where he..." Yesterday at the office, I heard a conversation in which the topic pivoted from one meaning to another in just the way it does in a scene from The Joneses. Steve and Kate Jones have had a good evening together, in role, and now that they are home, are in a situation that always produces a wonderful on-screen erotic kiss. And as Steve leans into it, Kate says, "This part (what you are about to do) is "pretend." Steve says, "Is it?" Kate responds, "It has to be." You'll notice that "It has to be" is not a response to "Is it?" Each person has a reality in mind, his authentic, hers instrumental, and each insists that that one be taken as more basic.

It's not an uncommon dilemma at all. In fact, I teach a course that relies on that mechanism to a significant extent. But being sensitized to it by a particular scene in a particular movie seems odd to me as I stand back and look at it.

Is that different from what my father was doing? Yes. It is. But it isn't as different as I would like. The great difference, the one I have been relying on over these years, is that Dad thought the "phee-los-o-phee" was in the show and he was discovering it. I don't think that is true. What I think is that the philosophical cast of mind is one you can bring with you to the watching of any kind of show at all. Or a narrative cast of mind; or a theological one; or an existential one. About those experiences, I say, "I am watching the show by means of the categories that mean the most to me. I'm not talking about what is IN the show."

And on those grounds, I expect what I see to be accepted not as "what is there," but only as "what I see." I expect my kids, for instance, to say, "Yup, that's how Dad sees movies. If it doesn't remind him of Jesus, it reminds him of Moses." They know they can ask me to talk about the movie using the concepts or narrative conventions they have in mind if they want to. They know I don't have to use my own. But they know I will use my own if there is no reason not to.

I think that maintains a crucial difference between where I think my dad was and where my kids think their dad is. But, as I said above, it is not as much difference as I once thought. I think my kids, in granting me "that's the way he watches movies" are willing to hear ME. They are willing to grant the reality, to me, of what I see and how I think. They are, usually, not willing to see that themselves nor willing to agree with whatever conclusions I might have drawn. But that I have done what I have done is OK with them. They are willing to hear it.

And that's really what I wish I had done with my own father. If I had treated the philosophical positions or presuppositions of, say, Days of Our Lives, as really there, I could have invited him into a conversation. I think he would have liked that. And if I had treated them as positions or presuppositions Dad had illegitimately projected onto the show--they weren't really there--I could still have invited him into the conversation and he would still have liked it. I was so fearful of Dad's delusions or disdainful of his pretentions that I really wasn't willing to push past them and make the contact I could have made. And that's what I mean, mostly, by "willing to hear."

I really wasn't. And now, at about the age Dad was when this event happened, I wish I had been.