Quite some time ago when my son was bussing tables at Bertucci’s he came across a note written on a napkin, and thinking I might find it interesting he gave it to me to read. I did in fact find it interesting and set it aside imagining that one-day I might want to write about it. Today is that day.
As best I can recall Adam told me the writer was probably about ten years old. After reading the napkin note, the image I conjured up in my mind of a fragile young boy frightened by his parents ongoing fighting was totally a fiction of my own making. The words he wrote will no doubt bring to mind an image for you as well. The boy’s wish for harmony felt simultaneously innocent and raw. And it made me wonder how his parents received his message. Were they defensive or dismissive, or did they hear his plea? Did leaving the napkin on the table indicate they hadn’t seen his words, or did they see them but not take them to heart? Or had they embraced his words, but left them on the table as they didn’t want or perhaps need the reminder?
So often children’s voices go unheard, their observations and feelings dismissed. Listening to children can be painful as they have a knack for stripping away the veneer adults are so skilled at sporting; but clearly the impact of not listening multiplies the long-term pain many times over.
Many years ago early on in my law practice, a Judge requested I represent a twelve-year old boy in his parent’s contentious divorce. As I talked to my young client he wondered out loud where he might live after his parent’s divorce, and he told me he felt like he was the check at the end of dinner… “y’know when two people fight about it but no one really wants it?” So many years later I still recall the wisdom and the pain in his metaphor.
As I think about these two young boys, decades apart, one leaving his plea on a restaurant napkin and one imagining he is the check left on a restaurant table, their stories resonate with me as a reminder that children often speak truth to power.
