Laurie Sales

So here’s the funny thing—when I look around this Chapel, right now, I see each and every one of you as someone’s child. Not just you students either, I mean my colleagues and friends as well. I am suddenly seeing the world through this lens, in which the arrival of each and every one of you was awaited with the same kind of unknowing anticipation that I have for my kiddo right now. I don’t know how often you think about the unconditional love that comes to you from your parents, but I can guarantee you, from where I stand now, it’s maybe one of the most remarkable feelings a person can have. And each and every one of you is the recipient of it. Just think what we, as a community, could do if we could channel a common direction for the surge of all that love—well, it might be larger than what I can take on in a morning Chapel Talk, but it sure is a thought.

One morning when I was a senior in college, I was sitting with my four roommates at our favorite diner in Evanston and we were chatting about our parents and our upbringings and one of my friends asked, “If your parents raised you to be one thing, what one thing did they raise you to be? Like they would have looked at you as a kid and blessed you to be what?” I still remember each of the answers. My friend from Manhattan, whose mother was a curator at the MOMA at the time, answered, “Be smart.” My friend Jackie, from Pennsylvania, who had been raised on a resort owned by her parents and who was a successful child actor answered, “Be cool.” We laughed at her, and I think that hurt her feelings, because it was somewhat true. Whether by example or by design, Jackie had indeed been raised to be funky, hip, and cool. And she was. My third roommate answered, “Be successful.” My remaining roommate and myself looked at each other. We were both from New Jersey, from parents of moderate wealth and modest lifestyle. I knew what she was thinking. “Be happy,” she said. Then everyone looked at me.

“Be good.”

I don’t think I really knew at the time what “be good” meant to me or how it would play out in my life. I like to think that now I know more. I try to be good—I try to be good to others, be good to the Earth, even be good to myself. Back then, I think it was more about a drive to appear to be good so that I would not get in trouble. Being good for me as a kid meant winning approval. Even as a little girl, I was the kid who would rush into my parents bedroom at midnight to tell them that while they were out I had convinced the babysitter to let me stay up a whole extra half hour, and that I was sorry, and that I couldn’t sleep until they knew the truth. Disappointing my parents was one of the worst things I could imagine.

How many times has any of you used the phrase, “my mom” (or “my dad) is going to kill me?” I used that all the time when I was a teenager. I was deeply afraid of getting in trouble, and I was convinced that my latest mistake was grave enough that I would lose their respect and admiration forever. Some of you may relate to this feeling. But of course the truth is, our parents are people, just like us, and they have the same background of mistakes and failures and bad judgment calls. They may not want to broadcast it, but all of your parents are full flesh and blood people. And like you, they have needs and fears and insecurities. And like you, they are not perfect, they are not always happy, and they are not always right. But they always love you. Even when you can’t surely see it.

The best example I have of this comes from my own grandmother—my father’s mother, who suffered with Alzheimer’s the last several years of her life. Her deterioration started with a paranoia and grew from a state of intermittent confusion to utter loss of all name/face/ place/event history. It happened slowly, and it was very difficult to witness. She lived with my grandfather and an amazing health care aide, about whom I could write a whole other Chapel Talk, until my grandfather died in his early 80s. He was the last person she really knew, and in his hospital room, when we were all there to say goodbye, she was so disturbed and frightened that she accused us all of plotting to kill him. It was very painful and strange. She was my grandma, and even though I was a young adult at the time, it seemed like a significant betrayal of everything we were supposed to mean to each other.

But then, a few days later, this amazing thing happened.

My grandpa, Sam, passed away, and my family made plans for sitting shiva, a mourning ritual that is an important part of the Jewish tradition. Sitting shiva is a gathering of family and friends, and in this case, we hosted my grandfather’s family and friends in the house in Florida that he shared with my grandma. My grandma did not recognize anybody there, including my father,—her son,—and my aunt,—her daughter. She spent most of her time sitting on the salmon-colored sofa, pointing to people and asking, “Who is that?”