There are some people for whom life looks so easy. One of them came up to me at a beach party recently, graying hair in perfect place framing his tanned side-smiling face, stuck out his hand, gripped mine firmly, and started talking to me about life.
He’d been the head of a major company while raising three children — all of whom are now grown and graduates of Georgetown.
“They thanked us recently for doing such a good job,” he told me.
The self-satisfied smile might have been annoying if he hadn’t been so attractive.
“What was your secret?” I said, catching my own heathens tussling out of the corner of my eye.
“Respect,” he said. “They had to respect us.”
“Did the kids fight?”
He shook his head, no.
“Do you and your wife fight?” I asked.
He shook his head, no.
“Don’t you get annoyed with her?” I asked.
He nodded and smiled, “Yes,” he said.
I couldn’t get him off my mind all weekend. They demanded respect. The kids didn’t fight. He and his wife didn’t fight. Every time the kids sassed me, or I started to argue, I stopped myself to ask “WWHD?” What would He do?
I see people like him all the time: calm, rational, pressed-clothes. People whose feelings aren’t always expressed the moment they have them. He likely didn’t tell his kids he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, he didn’t tell his wife every time she annoyed him. Hmmm. Interesting.
The day after my conversation with Him, we went to a water park. There was a woman in line, yelling at her boys, for fighting. I smiled when she rolled her eyes at me and held up her hand like, “Watcha gonna do?”
“I met a man yesterday who said his kids didn’t fight, that he and his wife don’t fight…”
We laughed.
She pointed at her older son.
“Yeah, well, this one was crying his eyes out all day yesterday ’cause it was his brother’s birthday, and he got all this stuff.”
I smiled at the boy, who looked up at me sheepishly.
“Yeah, but it’s understandable, right?” she said. “He did feel jealous, and he couldn’t help how he felt, right? I mean, he could have chosen not to express it, but he felt it, and that’s normal.”
We moved up in line then and I waved goodbye to the woman, by then yelling again at one or another of her sons.
So many different families, so many different styles.
This woman’s gruff demeanor didn’t mean she was a bad mom, it just meant that is how she had learned to handle things.
“He” and his wife had been strict, never allowing their kids to sleep over at friends’ houses. They maintained a certain control that the kids complained about — but complied with — and, later, thanked them.
But not everyone is so controlled. I, certainly, am not so controlled. Readers gave me guff last week over my lax rules, some predicting dire results for my poor children. I read the comments to my children and we laughed, especially the one that says they’re going to grow up to be, well, just like me.
I want to put Him on speed dial, but then I have no idea what his relationship is with his children. Indeed, I can barely determine mine with my own, and that’s certainly more important to figure out.
In the end, though, I can’t do it someone else’s way.
However appealing His might be.
