← Unlearn16: Class is in Session
Unlearn16: Class is in Session
The One 'You think I wasn't going to love you anymore'...That's Not What This Book Is About'
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Class is in session. Hey, how you doing? And welcome to Unlearn 16. Class is in session. I'm in my car. Of course I'm in my car. Because I want this podcast to talk about Grandma Ruby's chapter. And I think it's important I do it in this car because she loved it so much and she always, she. She always made me promise never to get rid of this car. Like, this was the best car she's ever. When she got a little bit older, she consistently forgot that I actually had this car. So every time she got in, number one, she'd say, lift my leg. And number two, she. She would talk about how beautiful this car is and how I could never give it away. So guess what? I won't ever give it away. It's gonna stay with me forever. These, as I'm sitting in my car, these are Grandma Ruby's glasses. So for those who don't know about my grammar, Ruby, or about the book that I've written, and you're just coming upon this. One of the most important aspects to who I am and to how I've become has to be my grandma. She was on this planet for 97 years. I got to have her for a solid, let's say, 47 of them. And who she was and how she spoke to me and how she loved me and supported me absolutely has made me the person that I am today. I'm going to try to do this without crying, guys, because it's hard. It's. When I've been writing this book, what I found hard is like really digging into those moments in my past where they were beautiful, they're important. And to know not only how important and amazing they were in that time and in that space, but how much of an effect they're having on me right now. I wish I would have done this podcast when she was still here. I tried to. I tried to talk her into it. She. She was on Tick Tock every once in a while, but that was a short time. She. She. As I started filming and doing all this stuff on social media, she. She didn't quite understand it, but she knew she didn't want to sit down and talk for an hour. But in all fairness, she, you know, she had things to do. She didn't want to sit down with me for an hour and talk about Heaven Only Knows what when I was a kid. You have to understand that my parents got divorced when I was very young or separated when I was very young. And my grandma looked after me when I was Little. So she had an incredible connection, an incredible imprint on who I was and, and who I would become. Right up into the point where, let's, you know, my mom thought maybe she was overstepping a little bit, as moms and their moms tend to have issue, right? So I was with her from a very young age. And then when my parents separated and my mom didn't quite like, needed a break and needed to decide to do something else, she took a break from nursing. We bought a store together in Mansfield. We went up there, we lived there all together. So we became even closer. But my mom, myself and my grandma would go on vacation every year. And these are the stories. When I tell these stories and you can obviously read about them, I don't need to regurgitate those stories, but those stories and those moments were so incredibly transformative. But I had absolutely no idea. I had absolutely no idea about how incredible they were, about how much of an impact they would make. And I think thinking about my grandma and the way that she. She loved. And I'm going to describe her in a little bit the way that she loved it. It's almost like this slow, this so slow, beautiful build to something epic. And, you know, I come home every night and she lived with me for the last, I don't know, six, seven years of her life. And she would always be on that porch up there. She would always be on the porch waiting. But like, not purposefully waiting. It was like I could come home, I could go out in the morning, come home at like noon, and she'd be there. Now she'd be having a cigarette. We told her not to do that, but, you know, we tried to get her to quit. I could come home at 2 o' clock early from school, she'd be there. I could come home sometimes at 11 midnight, she'd be there. It was like she had this sixth sense. And the only thing that she ever needed in this life, for me anyways, was a relatively quick conversation, maybe a bit of a laugh, and just giving her time so she could talk about what she needed to talk about. My grandma didn't need to sit down, have big conversations. She was never that person, right. She liked knowing that she was important. She liked knowing that who she was mattered. She liked knowing that she mattered to me. And that's really all she needed. She didn't need to sit down and occupy hours of your time. In fact, she didn't want you for hours of her time. She had crap to do, shows to watch, you know, And I Think we forget or we try to judge what people need and what they want from us. But the big parts of my grandma, she's British and she was gruff. Okay, she was gruff. Not a lot of hugs from Grandma Ruby. You felt sad, she'd take you out and buy you something that you. Let's go shop. What can I buy you? Right? That, that was it. Now, to some people, that's awful. Like, that's just like the worst thing. But that was her love language, that, that was the way she expressed it. That's the way she tried to see a smile on your face. Because big, complicated conversations. I don't know in retrospect if she could have them about herself, let alone have them about other people. If I was a betting woman, I think my grandma. I know my grandma lived with a couple things. I think she. She lived with a level of anxiety that I don't think she could ever quite understand and place. You know, they called it a nervous stomach or acid reflux or all these other things, but think it was anxiety. My grandma also grew up with a mom that passed. Her mom passed very early. Her family dynamic wasn't as stable. And I think there was always something missing there for her. Again, she could never talk about it. She never talked about it. You'd get glimpses. But her sense of self importance, and I think this is incredibly important, came from her. It came from her heart, her being. I don't think she was granted it by other people in her world. I think a lot of people in her world left. I think she had felt abandoned very early. And I think she derived a sense of identity and self worth in spite of. In opposition to that. And I don't. I never really understood how much that was going to affect who I would be. You know, she was a proud, proud woman, Very proud. And she led a lot. Even though she wouldn't say this, she led a lot with instinct. She could feel. I think she was quite empathetic. I think she could feel a lot what was going on around her. I think that nervous stomach was probably because she could sense what people were thinking and feeling. Kind of like a little kid or even like a, you know, like your pet, how they know when you're sad. She could feel that, but she never had the capacity or the ability or she never chose to sort of step into and unravel it all. I think because of the way that she thought about herself or the way that she contrived or thought about all of these things, I think was just different. So I have a feeling she walked around with a gut reaction to the world around her, and then she reacted to it. So. Could she have reacted poorly at times? Yeah, yeah, probably. But honestly, I think if you came to her honestly and authentically, that's who she responded cleanly to. Clearly, to my mom and her used to, like, throw it out. Everything was on the table with those two. Everything was on the table. But. But I also think, because there was never an ability or a choice or a learned intelligence, because I think it's a learned intelligence to be able to talk about your emotions, to be able to talk about those feelings, to be able to acknowledge them and acknowledge them in others and work through something. I don't think she was ever. She ever had the capacity to do it. I don't think a lot of my family did, you know, And I don't think I was even willing to acknowledge my feelings, my guttural response, my instinct, honestly, until I came out, I don't think. And then I was kind of shoved into it. I. I think coming out shoved me so hard into my feelings because I didn't come out until I was in my late 20s, shoved me so hard in my mid-20s into my feelings, that I had to quickly figure out, how do I talk about it? Who do I talk about it to sometimes? How do I defend it? You know? And I waited a long time to tell my gram. I thought because she was older, I thought, oh, she's not going to want to talk about this. Or. Or she. Or. Or maybe underneath, I thought she was going to have a problem, you know, and as I joked, talked about in the book and joke about, but this was quite literally how it happened. When I told her, after a particularly horrific breakup, she shoved me off the couch. It was like an elbow. I was sitting beside her, and she kind of gives me one of these, and she goes, what'd you think I was? And I popped off the couch. What'd you think, I wasn't gonna love you no more. That was it. That was our big conversation. That was. I never had another conversation with her about it. Not in a. Oh, you chose to. To date, or you're, you know, you're. You. You fell in love with a woman kind of way. Never again. We talked about relationships. Don't worry. My heart gets trampled many a time after that, when I get hurt. She knows when it's, you know, when I break up, but we never, ever had a conversation about that again. And there. There is this cleanness to that. And. And when I try to pinpoint how I am, who I am. It has to come back to that moment and that level of acceptance by that woman about who she was and how she loved me and how she supported me and, and I think it was instinctual for her. It wasn't fake. I don't think my grandma faked anything ever in her life. She. Listen, when she married my Grandpa in the 40s. The 40s. In the 40s. My grandfather's Polish and his last name, he was Polish, so, so he had a Polish last name. Now, my grandma didn't like, I didn't know this until recently, she didn't like the way it was pronounced. So if you were a woman, his Polish name, and I might mess this up, was Kajorski or Cat. No, Kajorska for, for a woman. Or Kadorski. Sk. Something like that. For a minute my grandma thought that was too hard and she looked at it and phonetically she said, well, it looks like Kadziorski. That's how it sounds. That's how we're going to pronounce it from here on in. And my grandpa said, okay. That's who my grandma in the 40s. I'm surprised my grandpa didn't take her last name. In all fairness. I think if the idea would have entered her head, he would have been a Cooper. That's who she was. That's how strong and, and like single minded she was. And, and to think about that in the 40s was just incredible. She never cooked a meal. Toast Marmite, that was it. You know, my grandpa did all that she did clean, but like on her own terms. And, and because probably she didn't think anybody else could do it properly, she definitely didn't ally herself with the expectations of her time, of her economic position. My grandma also didn't like, she didn't come from a wealthy family. She, she didn't like the fact that they were treated, how people were treated based on that. She always believed herself in her soul there was an expectation she should be treated well. And, and in her head, I think that came a little bit with money. But in, in actuality, I also remember her taking off her very expensive jewelry to see how people were going to treat her. When we went places. She had this genuine understanding of the way that people worked. And again, I think it was instinctual right before. And this was proven to me, actually all of this was proven to me right before she passed. So she passed when she was 97. 97 and a half. I told her she was supposed to hit 100. It was rude that she didn't. She was. She had to be in a. In a. In a home because she got sick at some point. She couldn't get out of bed. I thought maybe she was going to be able to get out of it, but, you know, that wasn't the plan. And so she was in this home, and I was terrified she was gonna hate it there, but she actually. The people were so lovely to her and cared about her so authentically that my grandma was okay there. But when I would come to visit her, she was forgetting a lot. Like, a lot. She'd forget people all the time. One time she forgot me for about 10 minutes, guys. It was the hardest 10 minutes I've ever tried to live. I swear to God. I sat down with her. She didn't know who I was. I said, well, that's okay. And I just tried to talk to her because, like, I read or I heard somewhere, you just have to sort of meet them where they are. Don't scare them. Don't try to tell them that you're somebody that they're not going to be able to put. And so I just sat with her. In about 10 minutes, she remembered who I was. It was the longest 10 minutes of my life. But every time I would visit her, and it was every day for the few months that she was there, she. She forgot that I was. That I was gay. She had no idea. So a lot of the times Anna would come with me, and so she didn't know who Anna was. And every time we would come there, I had to come out to her again. Every single time, she'd say, who's that? I said, oh, grandma, that's my fiance. That's my girlfriend. And every single time, guys, bar none, she'd go, oh, she's pretty. Like, yeah. One time she goes, well, that's a little weird. I said, yeah, it's a little weird, but I love her. And she goes, well, that's all that matters. And she's really pretty. And that was it. I came out to her. She. Maybe three months. Maybe three months she was there. What is that, 90 times? Maybe not all 90, because Anna wasn't with me every single time. But a good chunk of times, I had to come out to her. And every single time, she responded with her true, authentic self. And that true, authentic self wasn't bigoted, wasn't hateful, wasn't homophobic. It was accepting, and it was founded in love. Now, did she rely a little bit on there? Well, at least she's good looking side, sure. But you know what? My grandma would tell you that that's fine, that she always, she judged people the way people look, like that's what, well, they're pretty, I gotta tell them if they're pretty, if they're good looking, you know what I mean? And this ability of this woman who had lived, you know, since the 20s and to not have that as her instinct, there was a level of beauty in that and a level of equity and inclusion in that that I hope that that subconsciously drained into me. We never had a single big conversation. But who she was, I think instinctually became a part of who I am today. And outside of the coming out thing and outside of all of that, I'm not going to pretend I know a lot of you out there think like she was this like, like soft, lovely old grandma. Guys, guys. She was gruff, she could be grumpy, she wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. But I could call her at 2 in the morning pre Internet and ask her how to spell a word because I was working on an essay and she would spell it, say everything else okay, everything's good and hang up the phone. And I know for a fact that there was this underlying connection of I love you. And it gave me such strength, I think, and it gave my mom strength. And I did another chapter in a podcast with my mom so you get an idea of that relationship and what my grandma made me realize for today. Because that's what it's about, right? It's about these moments, these, these moments in your past that you don't quite understand what they mean in that time and what do they do for you now? Those moments, those are the moments that made me understand that all a kid needs, all any person needs in this world, I swear to God, is one person. I was lucky enough to have more than one, but is one person, is one person you can call at 2am and ask how the word spelled or bail you out, whatever point of life you happen to be. It's one person that no matter what you do, no matter how you stand or how you dress or who you date or what job you choose to do, that one person will never change, will never take it away, will never make it transactional. If every kid could have one person in their corner, in my opinion, you will change the world. And I've seen kids that don't have it and I try my best to be it. Because you can't tell them you're in your their corner. That's that's the beauty of family. And I mean family. It doesn't just need to be blood, but it needs to be over a long period of time because you can't tell somebody you're in their corner. You have to prove it so many times in so many big and little ways that they never, ever question it. They never have to. That only happens over time. And that's why it's so hard for teachers, I think, to develop that level of trust, that level of connection, that level of proof. You just tell, you tell the kid that. But if that kid's been let down time and time and time again, it's an uphold, bad, uphill battle. You gotta prove it. You have to prove that you were there. And it can't just be through words. It has to be through the moments of their life where they're scared, where they've made mistakes, where they've turned down the wrong path, where there has to be a walk back, where who they are gets to be okay with you. And that does not mean you don't hold people accountable. That does not mean when they do something wrong, you say, don't worry. No, no, no, no, that's not what I mean. But I do think that when we talk about teaching, we spend a lot of time talking about tactics of how to facilitate conversations about math or teach them how to read or teach them how to write an essay and teach them to be confident to do these skills, and we haven't figured out and we haven't helped teach them how to be confident in themselves, how to be empowered by themselves. Because if we can't do that, the lessons of mathematics don't mean anything. How are they supposed to mean anything when they don't believe in themselves because nobody else has believed in themselves before. How do we do that? And when a kid's 15, 16 years old. Oh, guys, it's a steep, uphill battle at that age. It really is. Because you're trying to undo or you're trying to manage, or you're trying to balance the disappointments, the loss, the limitations, and teach them. You know about the War of 1812? I heard weird noises. I thought that was a bird. I think there's birds nesting on my roof. My grandma also could be sarcastic. That was a love language. My grandpa. My grandma also understood the value of authenticity and honesty, even when it caused tidal waves. My grandma also taught me that who I was and how I was was incredibly important, powerful, meaningful and good. And she didn't do that with big conversations. She did that by picking up the phone and talking me to me on the way home from school about nothing. She did that by making sure that anytime I was ever with her that I felt loved. And I did it. I hope. I hope I did that for her. And some of the things I learned from her was. Was to be strong and be independent and do whatever the hell I wanted to do. Yes. And it was also learning from the things she couldn't do well. So have those big conversations. Have the hard, emotional conversations. Put things on the table. Don't walk out that door. You stay put until it's understood or resolved. All those things matter to me. And I think all those things are incredibly important to do. And just because she didn't know how to do them, and she didn't know how to tap into that anxiety, and she didn't know how to talk about it, and maybe she handled it wrong, and maybe she didn't do it right. And I know nobody is perfect, but even in the absence of things she did perfectly, she still taught me how to do them. You know, I think that through all the trips. So we used to drive to Florida together every year, her, my mom and I. You guys can read about that. Obviously. I wrote very. I wrote epic pages about it, and it was always hilarious and fun, and sometimes we had big fights. But there was a vulnerability to my grandma that maybe I only saw. I remember one time. So she wasn't living in my house yet. She was renting a house close by, and she wouldn't smoke in the house, so she'd go in the garage. But the garage door had this thing where it kind of like was on a weighted system, kind of. Kind of slammed shut a little bit. And she went out to try to have a cigarette, and she fell. And my mom called me right away and said that she fell. And I went rushing out there. And as I go rushing there, I sit her down, and I know that she's sitting down, and you can tell clearly she's broken this arm. And I know it's broken. She knows it's broken. She's not crying. You think she cried? No, she not crying, but I know she's scared. So I sat on the floor and I got behind her, and I leaned her against me and I said, it's going to be all right. We're going to get an ambulance. We'll get it fixed right up. I said, but this is what you get for smoking. And she laughed and she giggled that kind of mousey giggle that she had. And she Goes, well, don't move, though, Joe. Don't move from there. And I said, of course I'm not gonna move from here. I gotcha. I'll stay here until they get here. We'll go together. I always knew that my grandma wouldn't move from there. I always knew that. And the best thing we can do in this world, I swear to you, is have people in your world that know you won't move from. For you won't move from that. As long as they need you, you'll be right behind them having hard conversations if need be, but you will be there in every single way that you possibly can be. And I think the lessons that she taught me without ever talking to me, the identity and the confidence she gave me without ever trying to gas me up, without ever trying to explicitly state it, that all of the subtle lessons that Grandma Ruby gave to me were fundamental truths of how you should be there for a person and love and how you're going to help grow a person with action rather than just words. So my lesson in this episode is simple. You can't tell somebody they are strong, they are powerful, they are unique. You have to live it with them and you have to support it. You support them as they go through it. Don't tell them that they're powerful. Help them choose to be powerful. Stand with them while they are doing something terrifying. Don't tell them, whoa, whoa, whoa. This could fall. This could fail. You want to empower them? Make sure you're there supporting them when they want to do things that scare the living hell out of them. Make sure that you're being authentic every step of the way. If they're important to you, be authentic with them and make sure you can laugh at everything because they know you're never laughing at them. And on that note, guys, that was a crying one. Continue on down this. Down this road. I want you to put in the comments, put in your ideas. I want to be able to continue this discussion because I think as a teacher, as a person on this planet, that the more we can do and the more that we can give what my grandma gave to me, and the more that we can give that out into the world, the stronger, the better, the more impressive this world will become overnight. Thanks so much for hanging out, guys. And I will see you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat channel. Dismissed.