“The conversation is the relationship” was on my mind as I prepared to meet my new granddaughter in late May. Tesla le Tigre Byers was born on April 13, to Rebecca and Andrew. They live in rural circumstances south of Ithaca, NY. As I flew across the country overnight from Seattle, I was thinking about the quality of the conversation I wanted to have with this new family, now and in the coming years. I was grateful for this awareness. I felt ready for my new role, and was quietly quite happy with the idea of “grandfather” and what actual term of endearment will emerge.
I noticed, as I held Tesla over many peaceful hours, that I craved conversation with her. So I talked to her, of course, and made up stories about her as we paced together around the porch of her parents’ cabin, looking out over Cayuta Creek. I imagined her responses. Our relationship began to take shape as redwing blackbirds, Canada geese, mergansers, and the occasional beaver flew or floated into view.
I also noticed the ongoing conversation between Rebecca and Andrew as they went about their day and their work, with Tesla included in nearly everything. Their cycles and rhythms of living are different from my city routines, and I could feel how conversation was part of these rhythms. Conversations were cyclic in that the same, yet not the same, topics came around again and again over the days of my visit. As an observer, I could feel the complex fabric of relationship emerging, taking shape and form in this new family, this emerging system. I’m part of it, of course, as is my wife, Janet, and I could also listen from a bit of distance and have a sense of how it is when only the three of them are in the house. Janet and I, too, are weaving new threads of conversation as our relationship of 37 years is enriched each day.
I listened to other conversations during my eight days in residence, as Andrew and Rebecca worked with others in their immediate community, building fences, bottling apple wine, sharing garden wisdom and new baby wisdom as their lives unfolded before me.
“Everything is at stake, and everything in creation, if we are listening, is in conversation with us to tell us so.” (From David Whyte (2001), “Crossing the Unknown Sea – Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity”, p. 61.)