The Family

My brother, Nathan, and his wife, Buffye, visited this weekend.  They came in Sunday night and left Tuesday morning.

They had taken a timeshare company up on their offer to pay their expenses to tour, choosing a place in Tennessee.  They had no interest in buying, but timeshare places know that.  Nathan was betting he could resist the urge to buy and they were betting they could convince him to buy if he would come take the tour.  So Nathan and Buffye had a nice sightseeing trip there, then they explored the interesting places in Tennessee and drove to Pat’s for a few days, stopping in here on their way home.  They apologised for the short notice, saying they could not decide between Brad and me for the return stop, finally deciding on me the day before coming.

They left Pat’s at 5 in the morning, expecting to get here around 5 in the evening, but they ran into heavy traffic and several stops and slow-downs due to accidents so they didn’t get here till after 9.  That was one long day and they were tired so we didn’t visit much before going to bed.

We have a king size air mattress which we thought about setting up for them but clearing a space was more trouble than it was worth for a 2 night visit, so Luke gave up our bed and used those 2 futon mats stacked on the floor while I slept in the recliner.  He was comfortable enough that we will probably do it that way for future short visits, but he felt soooo good when he was able to sleep in the bed again.

We had a good visit.  Nathan hung around with Luke most of the time while Buffye and I visited in the house.  The guys hung chains for my hummingbird feeders in the back and Nathan helped Luke get the barrels out of the shed so they could be opened up and gone through.  I think there were 3 full sized barrels and 2 short ones.  Luke and I could not remember what was in them, but we thought they were full.  He has been dreading moving full barrels because of the weight, but, as it turned out, weight was not a problem.

He cleared a way to get them into the storage area of the shop, only to find that there was little that needs storing.  One had flower pots in it, put there for the move.  One had a little fabric, and one small one had memories in it.  The other 2 were empty.

The one with memories was the most interesting.  I found Luke’s letters to me from when we were dating.  I thought they had been burned when my dad got tired of all the kids storing their stuff at his house, and went on a burning rampage.  For so many years I thought they were gone but there they were.  I haven’t read any of them.  I may never read them, but it is nice to know they still exist.  Other than that, there was a huge pile of newspapers which I have not looked at and odds and ends from my youth and from when Ramona and Chris were little.  It will be interesting to go through everything, even though what was kept looks pretty random.

After they left I pondered something and finally figured it out.  I think it is interesting so I will share.

There are 2 styles of listening.  I will call them responsive listening and attentive listening.  My listening style is “responsive,” as is most of the people I know.  Responsive listening is listening with plenty of feedback both ways.  What one says, the other responds to, maybe with a short “hm,” maybe with a question, maybe with a story of something that they are reminded of, but there are plenty of words going in both directions.  Attentive listening is when one person is doing all the talking and the other is just listening, looking attentive and interested, but saying nothing or almost nothing in reply.

Buffye is an attentive listener.  Attentive listeners make me nervous.  I find myself talking too much, compelled to fill the silence.  I pause to give her opportunity to respond, and then nervously yammer on with anything I can think of when she continues to be silent.  Meanwhile, Buffye is waiting for me to stop long enough that she knows I am finished.

Now that I have figured that out, she and I will have better conversations because I will fight through my urge to fill the uncomfortable silence by continuing to talk even though I have said all I have to say.

Luke tends to be an attentive listener while I am a responsive listener.  He finds me rude because I constantly interrupt while I find him unresponsive because he is silent, so it is not like I don’t have experience with this problem.  But I didn’t recognise it in Buffye and myself till after this visit.  I  guess I didn’t recognise it before earlier because she does carry on a normal comfortable conversation until I tell a story or relate something that requires more than a couple of sentences.  Then she goes into listening mode.  I wonder if she is that way naturally or if it is something she learned.

Not that that small glitch in our communication took anything away from the enjoyment of the visit.  It was very good to see them.  I wish they had been here long enough to get all of us together.