Art of conversation

My son and his dirty clothes piled in the family car with me to go home for spring break. We left the campus talking about people, classes and philosophies. As we entered Union County he paused, looked at me and said, “You know, Mom, half the fun of coming home is talking with you.”
With no television and telephone to interrupt and the car radio off, my children and I talk when we travel.
The hardest conversations are when one has disappointed me. After one such disappointment, I was in the car with the kid who should have known better. The offender turned to me, “You don’t trust me do you?”
I thought about that for a while. “I trust you with my money. I trust you will complete the chores you are assigned. I trust you to do your best at school. I trust you in everything but that area. My trust was demolished. I am not ready to trust you yet in that area.” The transgressor used other expeditions to challenge the seriousness of the offense. I had a captive audience as I underscored the impact of what had been done.
My children are not the only ones who get feedback. Years ago, as I struggled for the second time, in as many days, to parallel park, my 3-year-old chirped, “You did it better that time, Mom.”
When I took my 33-year-old stepson to the store last year, he watched me negotiate city traffic for several blocks. “You are a lot more relaxed driver than you were when I was home.”
Besides getting feedback, we dialogue about everything under the sun.
After a meeting in Little Rock, my teenager and I talked non-stop all the way to El Dorado. As we neared home my adolescent sighed, “I love being alive. I love being on earth. I don’t want to die and go to Heaven.”
Death was not imminent, but I knew the feeling. “That’s how I felt when we first considered the moving away from Indiana. For years, I lived through one remodeling mess after another as your dad replaced wiring, plumbing, heating, walls and flooring. When the house was finished, he began looking for a new job.
“I did not want to move. I wanted to enjoy that house without the remodeling. When your dad accepted a new position, we moved out of a house perpetually in need of repair, into a brand new house with new furniture, appliances, rugs and decorations. No more remodeling messes and it was a breeze to keep clean. But before we moved, before I knew the reality of the next place, I did not want to leave what I knew for unknown territories.”
Car conversations are not usually so grave. Especially not when I’m driving a high schooler to the state science fair in Conway. The first time, we both were so excited and involved in our conversation that I missed my exit. It was an hour before I realized we were going north instead of south. The extra hour drive back went by quickly. We were too buy talking. Time does fly when you’re having fun.