Listen.
If your relationship ended, maybe you didn't need me to tell you what was wrong with the person.
If you hated your job, maybe you didn't need a lecture about being grateful to have one.
If you made a mistake, maybe you already knew it was a mistake.
Perhaps what you needed first was to know that the mistake had not changed your place in my heart.
There is time for advice.
But sometimes love needs to arrive before the lesson.
I Hope You Knew You Could Tell Me the Truth
Not every truth.
I understand that.
Grandchildren deserve private lives.
But I hope you never felt that you had to protect some perfect image of yourself around me.
I hope you could tell me:
“I don't know what I'm doing.”
“I messed this up.”
“I'm scared.”
“I thought I wanted this, but now I'm not sure.”
“I don't feel like myself lately.”
“I need help.”
Those sentences can become harder to say as we grow older.
Everyone assumes adults know what they are doing.
Here's something I've learned:
Most of us are figuring out far more than we admit.
At twenty-five.
At forty-five.
Even at seventy-five.
So if you ever came to me believing you had failed at adulthood, I hope I reminded you that adulthood was never something anyone completely mastered.
Maybe This Is Why Grandparents Can Hold a Different Place
Parents have a difficult job.
They have to raise children.
They have to make rules.
They have to worry about school, behavior, discipline, safety, money, schedules, and the thousand decisions required to get a child safely toward adulthood.
Grandparents sometimes get a different seat.
Not an unimportant one.
Just different.
Perhaps that is why some grandchildren tell grandparents things they are not ready to tell anyone else.
There can be a little more distance from the immediate problem.
A little less pressure.
A little more time.
And perhaps age gives us one useful perspective:
We have already watched many things that felt like the end of the world eventually become part of a much larger life.
The heartbreak passed.
The job changed.
The mistake became a lesson.
The frightening season ended.
Maybe that allows us to look at you during a difficult moment and still see the person on the other side of it.
I Hope My Home Felt Like Somewhere You Could Exhale
That might be the word I have been looking for.
Exhale.
The world can make us hold our breath without realizing it.
Trying to get everything right.
Trying not to disappoint anyone.
Trying to keep up.
Trying to appear okay.
Then there are certain people or places where your shoulders drop.
You stop performing.
You don't have to explain every silence.