Ortberg - Id like you more if you were more like me: getting real about getting close

W HEN I THINK ABOUT LOVE , I think about a table.

I grew up in a Swedish family in Rockford, Illinois, surrounded by other Swedes. Were not the most expressive, demonstrative, or verbal people. Sometimes when I come home at night and my wife, Nancy, asks me, How was your day? I tell her, Sorry, Ive used up all my words. I dont have any words left. Nancy cannot understand that because she never uses up her words. She is an inexhaustible source of words. Shes like the Niagara Falls of words.

One thing Swedes always have, however, is a table. For the people I grew up with, gathering around a table was the primary love language. If someone got hurt, got sick, got married, bought a car, bought a house, had a crisis, had a baby, or died, thats what wed do. There would always be the rich smell of coffee in the house (not Orange Mocha Frappuccino just coffee), and wed gather around the table to talk, laugh, and cry together.

If you think about it, many of the moments that shape our lives are spent around a table. In fact, some of my most vivid childhood memories took place around a glass-topped rectangular table in a small dining room at 227 Brendenwood Terrace in Rockford, Illinois.

If I close my eyes, I can still see it. Thats my dad sitting way down at the end. To his right is my little brother, Barton. Im the guy in the glasses and braces, and my mom is sitting kitty-corner from me on my right.

I remember one time when we were eating breakfast and my mom was holding a piece of peanut butter toast. It was that critical peanut buttering time when the toast is still warm enough to melt the peanut butter a little, and just as Mom was lifting the toast to her mouth, I reached over and smashed it right in her face. Before you knew it, we were all creaming each other in the face with peanut butter and laughing until we cried.

Good times.

And sometimes not so good times.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine (who also happens to be Swedish) lost his mom. As soon as I heard just a few hours after his mom had died I called him on his cell phone. Turned out his whole family was at a local pancake house sitting around a table drinking coffee. I immediately felt a resonance in my spirit.

I know that family.

Throughout the years, there have been other tables, as well.

I remember the first time I sat around a table with Nancys family. She happened to mention that she had bought a tire from a car dealer, and immediately someone at the table responded, I would never buy tires from a dealership. They charge an arm and a leg. I get em at Shell.

Shell? someone else said. You would get a tire at a Shell station? I would never do that. They have terrible tires. You couldnt give me one of their tires. I get mine at Goodyear.

Goodyear? a third family member chimed in. Their service stinks! If you get tires at Discount Tire, you get a free rotation every six thousand miles. Just saying.

And it went on like that.

Later, I said to Nancy, What was up with that fight?

What fight?

That tire fight at the table.

That wasnt a fight, she said. That was us helping each other.

Really? At my familys table, in the unlikely event that I ever bought a tire, my mom would say something like, Oh, Son, you bought a tire. Were so proud. You know, you raise kids; you try to teach them right from wrong. You never know how things will turn out. And now a moment like this makes it all worthwhile. Lets take a selfie.

Different tables have different styles, different rules. For Nancy, table talk involves a gritty commitment to reality being deeply honest about the difficulties of life. No pedestals, no idealizing. Flowery language sets her on edge.

Once we were in a restaurant in Menlo Park, where we live. As we were laughing about something, a woman came up to our table and said, I go to your church, and its so great to see you two enjoying each other. Ive been watching the way you interact the way you look at each other when you talk. You must have a wonderful marriage.

Sometimes, Nancy immediately shot back. She wants truth to have a place at the table. And Ive come to enjoy that. For the most part.

When we were dating, we used to have Sunday dinner at the home of Nancys grandmother, Gladys. The whole family would sit around an old mahogany table they had brought out to California from Texas. Sitting around that table made me feel like I was part of the family. Nancy loved that table.