My arm is still out of commission. Ironically, this is the first (older) entry I happened upon:
I was speaking with a young woman – by young I mean late twenties, early thirties – on Thursday when she happened to mention something about small talk and her mother. This woman said to me that she doesn’t understand why her mother wishes they could talk more often on the phone.
I asked this young woman what the matter would be in giving her mum a little of what she wants, and the reply I got was, “Small talk! All she wants to do is talk small talk.”
It hit me at that moment that my daughter and I had spoken no fewer than six times by phone yesterday. I admit that this might be some kind of record and that typically my daughter and I speak maybe four or five times per week, but yesterday we were discussing the earthquake and tornado and their occurrence in the midst of the G-8 and G-20 Summits, and exchanging ideas about paint colours in her new home.
I expressed to this young woman that in fact Sarah and I had spoken several times that very day, and she asked me why. I said something like, “Well, we live in different cities, which likely accounts for some of the calls, and my daughter has a daughter, which accounts for some more.” I met with warm but puzzled stares.
So for the rest of the evening, I thought about this notion of small talk, aware that I am as guilty of it as anyone. I asked myself how much was too much; what constitutes small talk, and was I bordering on the symbiotic? Here’s what I ultimately decided:
Small talk only works after the big talk has been done. In other words, if you have unresolved issues, small talk is likely going to feel extremely uncomfortable. Small talk, then, is what comes when two people feel safe with one another and when they care deeply enough to want to know all the ins and outs of that person’s day.
I love when my daughter tells me, for example, that she is making spaghetti sauce for dinner. I picture her standing at her kitchen counter, admiring the flowers she just planted in her garden, answering her small daughter’s questions. I want to know about paint colours – what she likes, why she is choosing those colours, what they mean to her. I love her sweet and funny stories about work and friendship and baseball, and I want to hear what makes her angry or afraid. And I am pretty sure she loves the same things about me.
I can’t even imagine her ever criticizing me for small talk, instead saying, “Ah Mum, it’s that thing about less being more.” And she would be right. I don’t know what I’d do without our chitchat; without our comparisons of who should be the next American Idol, or why Stephen Harper insisted on holding the G-20 Summit in this city whose people he seems to loathe. (Aha!) I can’t imagine what I would do without all the commentary we seem to conjure up in a day, or worse, what it would be like if the only things we talked about were what many people here consider “important.”
Not to agree, ever, with Stephen Harper, but it’s a little to do with that thing I have said about Toronto; about the intellectual snobbery in this city where people have no idea what it means to know everyone on your street and to have friends of all ages and to never find a discussion about weather boring. No. It’s the small things that make life rich; that keep me interested and invested; that make me feel important enough. And I can tell you this: when I am no longer on the planet it is that very small talk that my daughter is going to miss about me most, and about our lives together.
Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 12:22 AM
Saturday, June 26
Labels: Humour, Personals
