There is a frosty silence at my house today. I tried to follow the rules, speak my piece without confrontation, no name calling. But the conversation did not go well. Conversation would be a euphemism.
John of course has his take on what happened, and it varies somewhat from mine. Neither of us is all right or all wrong, but that detail is not very comforting.
It is unsettling to think that someone who spends as much time pondering communication tools as I do can still come up short.
I regret that I take it out on the other inhabitants of the house. They noticed the chill and put on a protective distance like a polar fleece.
"Look out for Mom. She is in one of those moods," they whisper.
Perhaps it is merely an internal shift congruent with the one happening outside my window. Leaves are dying en masse, and the glory of their final goodbye is enough to draw people to New England in droves. Death is indeed stunning, when it happens to maple trees. Something in me is dying... the expectation that John and I will agree or even understand each other all of the time. In this arena, the conflict de jour, we don't.
One of the questions in the
Seven Practices of Peace, the small group I just joined, which is based on a book John helped author I might add, is taunting me.
Will this matter in ten years?
The answer of course is no. It won't matter in six months. But it matters to me now and I am left with the uncomfortable task of sorting out what comes next. Do I set the issue aside like an unfinished quilt top, one that doesn't lay flat and is less fun to work on than the new fabric I bought in Maine? I can ignore it, look the other way. There is room on the back shelf under the half done Irish Chain. No one but me would even know it was there.
But as skilled as we have become at turning the other cheek, eventually we will need to look at each other face to face.
