The Meeting

It came out of the blue... something we couldn't have anticipated...

Sure, I like to think that I truly know my family, that I have their "moves" down to a science and, given that I'm a pretty intuitive fellow, I even have a leg up on what's coming down the pike.

Personally, I've been known to pull a spontaneous ritual out of thin air, but I never suspected that the apple who is my son would have fallen so very close to the tree that I am...

It happened about a month and a half ago.  Danielle, Cai and I were sitting at the dinner table joking, munching and carrying on with our daily reports.  Cai had stood up and sat down a dozen or so times already.  It was shaping up to be a normal evening at home - until...

Cai looked up from his cookie crumb-strewn place and announced, "We have to have a family meeting."

Huh?

"We have to have a family meeting tonight.  We can tell each other how our day and week and year are going..."

First thought: "Isn't this kid a bit young to be bobbing for apples in the organizational development-Deep Democracy barrel?"

...mischievous kangaroos halfway around the globe...

A few weeks ago, I returned from a gathering of fellow Coaches Training Institute course leaders.  Without going into too much detail, I walked away from that experience feeling as if each teeny, tiny strand of my DNA had been elasticized, stretched, strummed and otherwise re-ordered.  I had listened to lessons on Quantum Physics, Sentient Reality, local and non-local energetic events, and the notion of being dreamed into various states of existence by mischievous kangaroos halfway around the globe.  Evidently, one of those pesky marsupials had decided it was time to shake things up in our neck of the woods, and my poor son was possessed...

Second thought: "Pure, unbridled genius!  That's my Boy!"

Whether or not the notion had been channeled through wayward 'roos, Danielle and I agreed that the family meeting was a pretty cool idea.  After mopping up in the kitchen, we made our way into our living room (family room..?) for our first-ever family meeting.

Cai took a blanket of a nearby chair and placed it - just so - on the living room floor.  I suggested we locate a "talking stick" and within a few minutes, we were seated on the blanket sharing one of the finest family moments we'd had together in months.

"He sits," I reasoned, "all day at school."

While I had played with the concept of family meetings, I never took the idea too seriously.  I figured Cai - at the tender age of seven - was too young, and would probably be bored with anything that required him to sit still for more than a minute or two.  "He sits," I reasoned, "all day at school..."

What I failed to factor in was that when an idea comes from him, the details have a way of working themselves out without much influence, finesse, or manipulation on my part.  (C'mon, I'm human... When my brainy ideas and enlightened self-interest come to a crossroads, I can manipulate with the best of 'em...)

When I stop and really look, the desire for gathering as a family has been with us for a while.  We adults in the household had found sophisticated ways of dancing around it.  Cai had the wisdom to give voice to that desire, unfettered by notions of judgment, rejection or "proper timing."  To him, the moment had come.

We've had three or four family meetings so far.  When we missed our usual evening a week or so ago, it was Cai who, sitting on his bed, announced, "We didn't have our family meeting tonight!"  His sense of longing was palpable.  Indeed, something sacred had been skipped over - something he had been instrumental in creating...

As I sit cross-legged on our red blanket, look into the eyes of my small family and listen to their voices, I can't help but be moved.  This way of being with one another feels both new and ancient at the same time.  The conversation on the blanket is different - somehow more connected, more real, more evenly paced.  On the blanket in our living room, we stop - breaking the silence to share our truths - to honor, acknowledge and appreciate one another.  For a few precious moments, the rest of the world slows down, too.

"Ah," I think, "So this is what they mean by 'family room...'"

Then it hits me: "Smart kid..."