You’d Like That

Nothing gets me like someone telling me what I’d like. Sounds bad, but hear me out.

I have always been deeply intimidated by my mother’s brother. He is an extremely intelligent, painfully successful engineer, who now works as a professor at the Rhoad Island School of Design. His name is Brett.

Brett has what I would call a photographic memory, but what he likes to call a thorough way of storing information. He often comes to dinner with a problem on his mind, drops his fork mid bite, and run upstairs to his office. Solutions just come to him after his second bite of spaghetti. It’s amazing. In the midst of dinner conversation and battles over broccoli, his brain does backflips. The man breathes in calculous.

In addition to untapped Jeopardy potential, he is incredibly trendy. Brett, his wife Liz, and their three young kids, live in a renovated mansion in an incredibly old and crumbling part of Providence, Rhode Island. A historical society had a party at their house because they thought it was so cool–no lie.

Brett is a minimalist; he has exactly two shirts, two pairs of pants, and zero embarrassing reality TV addictions. The one exception to this lifestyle is his library–the man loves books, and has hundreds of them. He organizes them by genre: nonfiction, fiction, art, and children’s–don’t forget about his 14 month old, 3 year old, and 5 year old children. And yes, they are as cool as you think they’d be. Kelly, Brett’s 5 year old son, can sing an entire song after hearing it just once. Though this is too often channeled in the direction of Pixar films, kids got pipes.

His wife Liz, in addition to being the most beautiful woman I have ever met, is incredibly kind. She is raising her three children to be empathetic, problem-solving, philanthropists. When they go to the park, before they play, they pick up garbage–without gloves. Kelly goes to a bilingual, public school in their neighborhood, and each morning Brett walks him to school; they only use their car (singular) when necessary.

I lived with my aunt and uncle for a month and a half this winter, and was absolutely terrified when I moved in. These superhumans embodied what perfection meant to me; they were everything I wanted to be, and everything I knew I was too helplessly lame to grow into.

I had no idea how to be around them; everything I said felt dense and immature. Any opinion I held felt undersupported; I wouldn’t consider honesty under any circumstances. For example, how do I like my coffee? In truth, I like it with sugar, lots of sugar. Did I tell Brett that? Oh, no. Sugar is for weak, silly people who can’t stomach reality. I threw back black coffee with a grimace for weeks.

I got comfortable with Liz first; her unending kindness broke my fear after just a few days. Every night we cooked dinner together, and every night I was sad to set the table. To talk to her was to remember why people get married. She’s wonderful and funny and LISTENS. She understood me. Simple. She didn’t condescend, she didn’t judge, she just got it. And let me tell you, nobody just “gets me” like that. Nobody. I’m an odd one.
It took me longer with Brett. His mind, his goddamn mind, scared the shit out of me. This man has designed very real, very beautiful, parts of Manhattan. This man teaches at the most prestigious art school in the Northeast. How could I, a neurotic, former One Direction fan, have anything of significance to say?

He broke me when we started working our way through Oscar-nominated films. After watching one, he would tell me what he thought of it, how it compared to the others, and would then ask me what I though. I would usually agree with him, restating in some way whatever he so perfectly articulated.

When we got to the final film, The Shape of Water, he asked for my opinion before stating his own. His eyes were on me, and I had no buffer–nothing to agree with or reiterate. I had to say something, or I would look like even more of a helpless idiot–and so I did. I told him I loved it. I said it was weird and beautiful in the best way. Every shot felt intentional, purposeful–no fluff, all art.

He agreed.

I then asked if he had seen Harold and Maude, a beautifully weird cult classic with a similarly taboo love story. Brett hadn’t seen it, though he’d heard of it. I explained its premise, a 20 year old falling for an 80 year old, and he was intrigued.

He said we’d watch it next.

After this I was infinitely more comfortable around Brett. He started lending me books of short stories, and folded down the pages of his favorites.

One night, after the kids had gone to bed, Brett turned to me, and as if a thought had struck him and if he didn’t share it immediately it would disappear, he said “You would really like Francis Ha.”

This struck me as extremely beautiful. Someone I admired so much had just acknowledged that they knew me well enough to, with confidence, tell me what I would enjoy. During the weeks that I had been living with him, he had gathered enough information about me to make that judgement, and to make it without hesitation. In short, he cared–he had been listening. He had said “You would really like it.” He didn’t say “This is a good film”, or “You should really watch this film.” He said “You would really like this.” That just meant something to me.

Listen to people when they tell you what you’d like. They aren’t being pushy, they’re telling you they care enough to know you.