It
Hasn’t Shut Me Up – November
7, 2009
When I began working as a writer and a
journalist over 30 years ago, I had a sense of coming home, that I was doing
work that perfectly fit my temperament and personality. In fact, I felt a sense
of relief that I was finally able to ask questions; that I could make money
doing so was a bonus. I’m known in my family as a questioner and a communicator.
I name problems and issues. Analyzing, describing and challenging is how I
understand things. And I believe (stubbornly but incorrectly) that any problem
can be solved given enough opportunity to talk about it. My curiosity meets my
inner chatterbox child quite often as I go about my day mumbling questions that
are, more often than not, rhetorical.
It’s likely that I am this way because
it wasn’t always this way. I grew up being told to keep quiet and not to
question. “Curiosity killed the cat,” snapped my maternal grandmother. Sharing
my feelings and ideas, and commenting on what was happening around me was also
taboo. “Hold your tongue,” my grandmother would say demeaningly when I began to
chatter. Conversation was for adults and learning was a passive, listening sort
of experience. “If God had wanted you to talk more than listen, he’d have given
you two mouths and one ear,” admonished my mother when I would try to involve
myself in dinner table chat. “Little pitchers have big ears,” cautioned my
mother mysteriously when the adults wanted to discuss one of the many
interesting topics that were off-limits to a child. “Children are to be seen and
not heard,” concluded my grandmother.
As a child, I felt resentful. As a
teenager, I began to reject the way I had been brought up and awkwardly tried to
find my voice, which I did, with increasing courage and confidence. As a young
mother, I was determined to encourage my daughters’ questions, to respect their
opinions and to include them in conversations. That became the foundation on
which our unschooling lifestyle was built. Now that I have finally developed
enough courage to ask, but can’t because they’re both dead, I wonder why my
grandmother and mother were so determined to shut me down. Did those two strong
women resent being silenced themselves? Did they long to be heard in their own
lives? Or did they truly believe that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me?
My mother was aghast as, just a few
years before she died, I finally began to break the silence in our relationship,
naming things, asking questions and hoping for answers from her that she was not
able or willing to provide. Sadly, that is not the only situation in which my
relentless questions and observations are not welcome. I’m still occasionally
told not to be so nosy or so blunt, to bite my tongue, to suck it up, to know my
place. I’ve learned tact and grace over the years, but I have also learned that
questioning is the most direct route to learning. And so it hasn’t shut me up.
Posted: 2009/11/07 10:09AM
