I realize some of you are lonely, and no one is texting you love notes when they catch you being awesome. I’ll give the same advice I give my kids when they are struggling socially: If you want to make good friends, be a good friend. Send kindness out in big, generous waves, send it near and far, send it through texts and e-mails and calls and words and hugs, send it by showing up, send it by proximity, send it in casseroles, send it with a well-timed “me too,” send it with abandon. Put out exactly what you hope to draw in, and expect it back in kind and in equal measure.
I am so convinced we reap what we sow here; sow seeds of affirmation and goodness and grace into others, and you will reap the devotion of well-loved friends. You will. You cannot love others genuinely and generously and have it return void for long. Convinced my dance card was full with no room for new relationships, I have literally had some now dear friends wear me the freak down with kindness (and sarcasm because that is my primary love language), like a rushing river of love eventually smoothing out this jagged, call-screening rock until I eventually said, “FINE. I love you. My gosh, you made me.”
Inversely, sow seeds of silence or uninvolvement or high-maintenance entitlement, and you will likely reap an empty inbox. I mean this tenderly, sisters. Psalms tells us that “deep calls to deep,” and similarly, grace calls to grace, joy calls to joy, laughter calls to laughter, sincerity calls to sincerity. Unfortunately in the same way, drama calls to drama, dysfunction calls to dysfunction, bitterness calls to bitterness, cynicism calls to cynicism. We get back what we put out. We have so much say-so in our own relational experience. Be the friend you’d love to have, call to the deep, and you will attract the treasured kind of friends like sunlight, like a lightning rod, like honey.
Fangirl your friends.
This would be so good for all of us. No need to fangirl this yahoo. Let’s free one another up to occupy appropriate roles for one another as encouragers and cheerleaders, fellow learners and dreamers, like friends, like allies, like sisters. That feels safe and right and good to me. I’m all here for that, for you, for us. Be good to each other. Let’s heal the world together. We each have a note to play, and I’m glad to play mine, grateful to be a tiny part in a big, beautiful, wonderful, sisterhood song.
From birth to age 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35 she needs good looks. From 35 to 55 she needs a good personality. From 55 on, she needs cash.1
— SOPHIE TUCKER
CHAPTER 21
WE WERE SORT OF MEDIUM
Dear Parents,
Mom, today is your sixty-fifth birthday, which means you and Dad are both officially able to retire as well as receive the senior discount at Luby’s. Congratulations. You cannot beat the Luann Platter for $5.99. Your son and oldest grandson would be happy to take you there to celebrate, because, as you know, they are Luby’s evangelists. Grandma King raised us right; we love a cafeteria.
Anyway, I thought I’d write you and Dad some thoughts on Growing Up King. The sibs and I have discussed and have nearly identical assessments. The only departure is their extra gratitude for getting bailed out of jail. As the sole dependent who hasn’t seen the inside of a cell, I confess I have lied to you about a bunch of other stuff, so let’s just call it even and leave you to bask in the glow of no longer raising us. Teenagers are delightful! (We cannot believe you were teetotalers back then.)
One of the lamest things about raising kids is how they don’t fully appreciate you until they are grown. What a chore to suffer the self-righteousness, exasperated sighs, and sassy mouths, and you endured all that and then some. I mean, we were some oppressed children (roll eyes here). Would it have killed you to buy one pair of Guess jeans and subscribe to MTV? Nobody knew the trouble we saw.
But then we grew up and discovered we’d had an amazing childhood. My first clue came in college when tons of my friends had broken families and worked three jobs to put themselves through school. It never even occurred to me to worry about funding my degree, much less detaching from toxic parents. As it turned out, we’d been cradled in security since the day we were born. Oh sure, we didn’t have much money, but I had no idea. Our life never felt scarce or fragile. Now I know you scrimped and worried, but we never felt that then. You gave us real security, the kind that settles down in your bones and insulates you from fear. (To this day, I cannot muster up much fear. I am overconfident in this world and its people, which you can either take the blame or credit for.)
We have reams to be thankful for. I could fill the rest of this book with it. But since this is just a letter, not a comprehensive family history, I thought I’d mention three specific gifts you gave us:
First, thank you for raising us in a fun and funny home. Our house was filled to the rafters with laughter and absurdity. We were not overly earnest or intense, and we learned that a healthy life meant taking a handful of things incredibly seriously and most other things less seriously. You never majored on minors, and it liberated us from a sense of failure. Some of my friends were criticized within an inch of their lives growing up, and they still struggle deeply with self-assurance, contentment, joy. There is a place for a “no big deal” outlook, for the ability to laugh instead of cringe, to find humor instead of offense. We were not constantly avoiding critique, so we were free to just be normal kids with laid-back parents who quoted funny movies. To say nothing of piling into one bed with Dad every night while he told demented bedtime stories like “The Electrocution and Dismemberment of the Big Bad Wolf” and that time he and Uncle Tom shot Grandma’s cats because they slept on their freshly waxed cars. Sweet dreams, kids.
It worked out. Plus, we are hilarious now. Remember that girlfriend Drew had a few years ago who never laughed at our jokes and didn’t respond to our Gold Material? Goodbye and godspeed, ma’am. You (mainly Dad) groomed sweeping, dramatic storytellers; we can take one small experience and turn it into a stand-up routine. It is an obnoxious, self-congratulatory skill set, but here we are. It’s so fun to be together as grown-ups, because someone will always be on. If not us, our spouses, because humor was obviously a marriage prerequisite. Like the time Zac told us about his high school garage band Burning Animosity: “We didn’t sing or play instruments, but we were going to learn. What mattered was that we had a band name. Then life happened. Someone fell in love. Someone got grounded. Stuff went down. Story as old as time.” No one makes us laugh like ZZ.