A few weeks ago, five of us piled into the car to go out for dinner. The ride was about twenty minutes. About five minutes in, our granddaughter, age seven spoke up, ​“Let’s talk about our feelings?“ She picked me to go first. I was surprised by the request and a bit anxious. I am not often asked about how I am feeling. And anxious because I often consider how the other person might hear and feel about what I was going to say. I fumbled around trying to think of an answer. Finally, I said, ​“I am feeling happy because you asked me how I was feeling.”

When I was seven, ​“asks” were mostly ​“tolds”; orders to stop what I was doing or to think about the consequences of my behavior. I was not asked what I was feeling. My parents were very protective, especially given their flight to freedom backgrounds. If I dared to say I was ​“scared” about something, their response was ​“That was nothing to be afraid of.” It was a blip on the scary scale by contrast to their lives. True, but I was still scared.

Finally seated in the restaurant for dinner, the wise seven-year-old granddaughter asked us, ​“Tell me a funny story to make me laugh.” As a more serious than silly person, I resorted to a Knock-Knock joke; ​“Knock, knock.Who​’s there? Ice cream. Ice cream who? ICE CREAM SO YOU CAN HEAR ME!”