That stuck with me longer than I expected it to.
✦ ✦ ✦
I called Kevin on a Sunday, not to relitigate the house specifically, but to say something broader I’d been working up to.
“I want you to know I’ll always help with whatever you need — the dishwasher, the rides, all of it, gladly. But I noticed I found out about the house from a flyer you left on my counter weeks ago, not from a conversation, and I realized that’s sort of how it’s gone with the bigger things lately. I’m asked when something needs fixing. I’m not asked when something’s actually being decided.”
— Don, to his son
Kevin was quiet on the other end for a moment. “Dad, I didn’t — I guess I figured you’d think it wasn’t really your call to weigh in on, since it’s our house.”
I told him that wasn’t really what I was asking for — not a vote, not veto power, just to be someone whose opinion got asked for, the way you ask someone whose opinion you actually value, rather than someone you simply inform once things are mostly settled.
Kevin sat with that. “That’s fair,” he said. “I think I just stopped thinking of you as someone to loop in on stuff like that, and that’s on me, not because I don’t value what you think.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The house sale didn’t change because of that conversation — by the time we’d talked it through, Kevin and Megan were already deep enough into the process that backing out wasn’t really the point, and I didn’t want it to be.
