He nodded slowly.
For the first time since Christmas, I felt something inside me loosen. We were finally discussing what had happened without pretending the problem was my personality alone.
“I can over-explain,” I said. “Teaching did that to me. Thirty-five years of believing that if someone doesn’t understand, I should try another angle.”
Scott looked at me.
“But Lauren could have said, ‘Naomi, I don’t need a lesson.’ You could have said, ‘Mom, just listen for a minute.’ I might have been embarrassed. But uninviting me from Christmas was not communication.”
“No.”
“And standing there while your wife told me I made everyone uncomfortable was not kindness.”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
This time, he did not attach an explanation.
I believed him.
Believing an apology, I learned, is not the same as being ready to erase what caused it.
“I’m glad you said that,” I told him. “But I’m not ready to act like it didn’t happen.”
“I understand.”
Before he left, he said Lauren wanted to apologize too.
“She can call me when she’s ready,” I said.
Three days later, Lauren called.
She did not begin well.
“I want you to know Christmas wasn’t meant as some kind of punishment.”
“What was it meant as?”
She exhaled.
“A break.”
“From me.”
“Yes.”
At least she was honest.
Lauren told me that for years she had felt as if every conversation with me came with footnotes. I had assumed she was uninterested in my explanations. She had experienced them as corrections.
“I would say something at dinner,” she said, “and you’d give the background. Sometimes you were just adding information, I know that now. But after a while I felt stupid before you even opened your mouth.”
That hurt to hear because I could recognize the possibility.
“I never thought you were stupid.”
“I know.”
“I wish you had told me.”
“I should have.”