Loaded questions

The lights are dim in the restaurant, and I am sitting across the table from my daughter, who is able to read from the menu without the aid of a flashlight.

Unlike myself, who, holding the double-sided laminated tablet at arm’s length, I can’t even pretend I’m not reciting the list of options from memory.

But this is fun. Something special. Out of the ordinary. We dance around the choices as if we will try something outlandish. Something different than the usual things we order: Salad. Pasta. Extra bread, please.

Maybe, dessert before dinner, for instance.

Should we get appetizers and share? Separate entrees?

It doesn’t matter what we order.

It’s just the two of us. Dining out like friends.

We will chat, and laugh, and share bits and pieces from our plates as if the morsels were merely happenstance treasures.

The tales we tell about our day seem like threads of stories woven into a grand tapestry.

It really could be delightful.

If I didn’t try to insert a generous portion of parenting as a side dish.

I serve it up as if it were a casual conversation about current events.

I ask her a question about her opinion, which we both know is dangerous, but of course, I think I can control where the chit chat takes us.

After all, she is my child. I raised her.

And like all parents, I get caught in a trap hoping my kids will see the world as I understand it; or at least within the same grand scheme and plot points. After all, this is what we are expected to do as trusted adults: impart values and model appropriate behavior so that when we launch our kids into a space of their own, it’s really just an orbit of our own planets.

She knows it’s dicey:

Can she be honest? Can she have beliefs of her own? Or is this just a test, where I get to see how much of her wisdom aligns with my own?

There is no doubt we won’t see eye to eye.

The only question is will we be able to agree to disagree?

There is no doubt we disagree. Hissing at each other quietly as our server clears some plates.

Dinner is officially over.

And yet, I hang on the notion that my facts are accurate and in time, she’ll see them just as clearly as I do.

But the problem is at this moment I couldn’t be more wrong.

And it’s precisely what happens when you ask a question to which you are sure of its answer.

We can see it in each other’s faces —these one-generation removed reflections — that any test of this nature can only result in failure.

We are not of the same mind, and only one of us is currently OK with that.

It’s. Not. Me. But I’m silent.

The server brought the check without asking if we wanted dessert. Sensing the chill in the room had come from our table and neither of us would warm up to ice cream.

I paid the check, and we started to walk home. In silence at first, and then in a swirl of admonishments and accusations.

It. Wasn't. Me. Yelling.

But I did find myself apologizing in earnest.

I should have known how loaded questions have a tendency to backfire.