I Like You Just The Way You Are

If I had wanted you to change, I didn’t like you much anyway.

Long ago in a past life, I was a construction worker. I was lonely, getting high in the afternoons, and tired from breathing crap from construction sites. Just think drywall dust and welding smoke.

I’d come home from a long day at work, flip channels on the TV while my laundry was running, and settle on a channel to watch. And I remember one day, as I was flipping channels I just happened to catch Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I saw Picture Picture say, “Hi”. In that not so very adult moment, I needed to hear something he said:

I like you just the way you are.

I sighed. I just never forgot that message. That one afternoon, I needed to hear that message. I watched the show for a few more minutes and drifted off into my afternoon nap.

Decades later, I’m a father, a husband, and a middle-aged man, waking up from a very long adolescence. I have kids and my wife and I had a disagreement about child discipline. Being from Vietnam, she believed in a more authoritarian style of parenting. This was something I did not expect from her and had no clue from my first meetings with her that she would be like this.

I was interested in peace. I wanted peace. I tried for a long, long time to get peace. And today I have it. But I saw how hard it was for my wife and the kids to have peace, so I tried my best to make it better. I…