The Conversations Parents Avoid

The parent has been standing at the kitchen sink for a long time, washing a single mug. She has known, for about ten days, that the conversation has to happen. The diagnosis came on a Tuesday. The children, who are eight and twelve, have noticed that the adults have begun walking around in a slightly different rhythm, and that the phone calls have been taken in the garden rather than at the table. The eight-year-old has asked twice whether everything is alright. Each time, the parent has said yes.

She does not know how to begin. She has rehearsed the conversation on the way back from the school run. She has Googled, at half past eleven the night before, the right words to use with an eight-year-old. None of the websites was the website. The mug in her hand is now perfectly clean.

In our work, parents arrive at this kitchen sink often. The conversation varies. It is sometimes the diagnosis. Sometimes the divorce. Sometimes the death that has happened or the death that is coming. Sometimes the loss of a job, the move of a house. Sometimes the question about where babies come from or about the war on the television, that the parent has been hoping she would not have to answer this week. The configurations differ. The threshold the parent is standing on does not.