A Guide for Small-talking to Parents

I've had what I thought was a healthy disdain for small talk since puberty. I raged against people contentedly chatting about grocery deals or potted plants while there was so much terror and suffering in the world.

Around this time, I also began to have a double consciousness -- making out with girls and telling myself that I was just experimenting for boys, that it didn't mean anything greater about me or my life.

By scoffing at small talk and simultaneously not wanting to talk about anything of substance with family members, I was left with nothing to say to many people I'd known growing up: aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors. And of course, parents.

My family silences contrasted with the quickly intimate confidences I created throughout my late teens and twenties. The party always ended at my dorm room or apartment, with a few friends whispering about what kept them up at night and what kept them going. I sought intimacies with anyone on the margins, where I was: restaurant workers, struggling writers, anyone queer or sexually experimental.

I learned a lot, but I am in touch with almost no one from that time of my life. We were bright-burning candles that quickly extinguished, friends of a season.

For the first time in my life, I'm spending time with my elders and thinking about the next decades of our relationships and how I can make them stronger. Against all my natural resistance, it seems to come down to a question of small talk.

It all started when Sonia and I began reviewing "acceptable topics of conversation," when driving to visit to her parents or mine. We had long ago lost the ability to talk naturally with our own parents about our real lives, and this seemed the best way back in. By listing out conversation topics for one another, we gained confidence and security that we could get through the night without too many awkward silences.

Acceptable Topics: The Korean Side

• How to make Korean food (this is actually several, since you could talk about each dish in great depth)
• How to make kimchi (merits its own bullet point)
• Early days in America (their tourist stand, how they chose Philly)
• Korean traditions around marriage, 100 days (for new babies), Lunar New Year
• Business at the store
• The new micro-loan at the store, what they got with it, the sketchy contractor
• Retirement (although I learned that this quickly leads to the "when are you having a baby" conversation)
• The house in the suburbs where Sonia's brother & sister-in-law now live
• Her brother's job & sister-in-law's progress in nursing school
• Us in 2018: getting healthier, plans for the house, trips

Acceptable Topics: The White American Side

• How to make Slovack pastries
• The grandmothers (I'm still lucky enough to have two)
• Other family members (the cousin headed off to college, the cousin's child with health problems, the aunts and uncles moving south)
• House renovations and improvements, recent and planned
• Yard improvements and changes, recent and planned
• Dad's substitute teaching gigs
• Mom's halfway house project for women coming out of prison
• Upcoming trips
• My brother's work on his house & his girlfriends' parents' health
• Us in 2018: getting healthier, plans for the house, trips

Gay children with difficult family relationships have so much stacked against them. For years, we practice the art of hiding ourselves from our parents. By the time we come out, we've lost the ability to talk about even the most everyday aspects of our lives.

When we come out, we want to launch right into the big questions: the meaning of life, our dreams for the future. Yet we struggle to talk about the most everyday happenings: a movie we saw, a night out with friends. 

Even though it's still uncomfortable, Sonia and I are making plans and showing up. We are being patient with ourselves and with our parents. We are starting with the little things, and learning how to talk to them again.