I went for a walk around Green Lake last night after work with My Friend Treasa. This is a fairly Seattle thing to do: it’s three miles around, which goes very quickly and pleasantly when you have someone to talk to. This time of year there are even some baby duckies to look at, and that’s always a good thing. There are lots of people walking their dogs and people jogging with strollers and people rollerblading comically. It’s a good walk in the summer, when the idea of swimming in the indoor pool or working out in the indoor gym is essentially against the law. Or it should be, at least. My only complaint is that I wore my nice blue sandals because I was coming directly from work and I got a couple of huuuuge blisters that are currently decorating my poor feet in their puffy grossness, forcing me to wear flip-flops to work today. They only make me miss Carl more, because he usually has some moleskin on him somewhere, and if he were here right now (sniff!) he’d bandage me up but good. As it is I have to make do with some five year old band-aids I bought probably when I still lived in the Inland Empire. They’re working okay, but ow.
After our walk we limped over to a fine dining establishment that has outdoor seating and met up with Treasa’s new husband John and talked about all the people we know and how long we’ve known them and how weird (but nice! Weird and nice!) they are and how we don’t always understand them, but gosh darn it, we like them anyway. And in one of those conversational twists that are sometimes brought about by a delightful excess of marionberry crisp, I was all of a sudden asking John and Treasa, in a perfectly normal and forthright manner, “So, did your families hug and say I Love You a lot?” There are a lot of good things about my no longer providing therapy, I believe, but one of the unforeseen consequences of not getting it all out of my system on a weekly basis with hapless clients is that sometimes I will bust out with therapisty questions to my perfectly innocent friends. John and Treasa, being the good sports they are, told me that no, as a matter of fact, neither of them came from families that do that sort of thing. They are quite happy declaring their love to each other privately, at times of their own choosing, and keeping at least a comfortable space bubble between them and others at all times.
Well, this was astonishing to me. I found it all very fascinating. You may not be surprised to know that I do things a little differently. I declare my love for friends and (certain) family members on a fairly regular basis. I am all about the “sugar” and the “darlin’” and the “sweetness,” and I’m not even from the South. I am liable to hold hands or link arms in public with girlfriends…in fact, I saved Marah from being carried off to a sun-drenched Tuscan villa accessible only by picturesque Vespa by several variants or hood-lidded ragazzi by linking arms with her (okay, and making threatening gestures) pretty much all through Italy. With my boyfriend also I am all about the hand-holding in public, although I generally draw the line at kissing in front of other folks. I take the phrase “cry on my shoulder” literally. My Crazy College Roommate and I used to initiate late-night conversations by leaping onto each others’ beds. I’m touchy. Not indiscriminately, those of you who may be going to JournalConand are now afraid of being molested by me will be relieved to learn. And don’t worry, I’m not a random “Oooh, someone needs a hug” type of person. I guess I’m just more comfortable with friendly touching.
Like kissing to say hello. In Miami, I guess, it’s just something you do, at least among the people I know. You side-kiss your friends on the cheek when they come to pick you up at the airport from college (but not the next day when you get together to swim and play Girl Talk Date Line), you kiss their moms when you go to visit, you kiss your mom’s friends when you see them, you kiss your mom’s co-workers that you’ve known since you were thirteen, you kiss your sixth-grade teacher when you run into her in the grocery store. It’s just politeness. It’s like “Hi Mrs. Yehle!” {side cheek kiss} “Yeah, I’m out in California now. Mm hmm, psychology major. How’s school going? How’s your daughter? Yeah, my mom is happy to have me home this summer. It’s great to be home. Okay, nice to see you, bye!”
And I haven’t seen anyone do that on the West Coast. Hardly anyone. Maybe if I’d lived in LA proper when I lived in California, but I don’t know. And no one does it in Seattle either; no one that I know, at least. This is all fine with me, by the way. I’m certainly not about to disregard social norms. I’ve never even really thought that much about it. Is it too much of a stereotype, by the way, to note here that my Italian-American family (in Queens!) is very touchy? So much so as to make me a little bit uncomfortable sometimes, with the ass-pinching and the cheek-tweaking. I do remember, though, really liking to go visit that part of the family when I was a kid, because they all felt very accepting and loving and friendly. Even if they couldn’t stand you personally there was still this sense that if you’re part of the family and so you belong there, and I guess they use physical closeness to indicate that. I sound like I’m writing an ethnography over here. It’s true though.
And as far as “I love you” goes…I think one of the arguments against telling people you love them is that it sort of cheapens the phrase, its import and depth and meaning, by using it all the time. Saying on the phone at the end of a conversation, you know, “Okay, love you, bye!” maybe makes the times you say “I love you completely and with everything I am” less special. Maybe it’s something you only tell certain people at certain times. It’s not that I don’t believe that saving it for certain occasions isn’t a good thing, necessarily…but I still don’t think, as often as I say it, that I’ve ever told someone that I loved him or her without meaning it in some way. There are lots of ways to love people, right, there’s no one meaning to the word.I like to embrace all its usages, although I admit I don’t usually break it down for folks at the end of a conversation: “I love you in a familial sense because you are my mother and gave me life and I also love you in a fun silly way because of that time you made me go off-roading in my Corolla because you wanted to see some llamas that were, inexplicably, at the Tulip Festival this year.” I haven’t always been completely forthcoming, in explaining exactly how I love someone: “I love you because you make me feel good about myself.” “I love you in that weird way where I’m kind of addicted to you but I don’t want to admit it so I’m going to gloss it as love.” “I love you because I love the memories we have together even though I admit we don’t have much in common anymore.” So no, usually it’s just a “Okay, love you, talk to you soon.” I assume that anyone I do happen to love kind of knows what I mean. I just think it’s important to say it for some reason; you get plenty of people telling you, in your life, that you’re ridiculous or unimportant or annoying (or is that just me that gets that?), so I figure it can’t hurt to try to tip the scales a little the other way. See what I mean, sugar? Darlin’? C’mere, let me hold your hand. I looooooooooooove you!