“Let Them Give”: Children Don’t Just Need Love, They Also Want to Give It, and What Does That Have to Do With Marriage?

I’m studying with Libi for a Torah test, and in Parashat Behaalotcha I get caught up in the menorah in the Temple and the description of how it was made. “Come on, Mom, let’s move on,” and I didn’t really want to move on. I held my head. I couldn’t calm down about Rashi. “How was the menorah made?” the teacher asked, “hammered gold, from its base...” and Rashi brings another example from the Book of Daniel, when Belshazzar sees the hand writing on the wall. Wait, I’ll ask Libi for the notebook for a second so I can remember exactly and quote it approximately. Children love it when their parents learn Torah, halacha, commandments, and deeper ideas from them. By nature, children want to know that they have a place inside us where they can give to us, a place where they can pour out pleasure and satisfaction. We help them do this by honoring us, and that is what they want most. To know that we know how much they love us. From time to time, we can also tell them that. Enough already with all day long about loving them, that is obvious and certain, and I think we are already choking on those messages. I am talking about a different level in relationships. To give them a safe opportunity to love us. To give them the confidence that we feel that love. “You wanted to make me happy with that note from the teacher, huh? Then you should know that you succeeded.” The focus is not on the grade on the test or the content of the note from the teacher, but on the desire and the important principle of creating closeness in the relationship. It is the same unifying idea even if it is something negative. “You didn’t want to upset me with that comment the teacher wrote on the side of the test in red marker, right?” If the result is a smile or a hug, the content does not matter. The connection does. In a moment we will jump hand in hand to a similar principle in marriage, but until Libi comes back with the notebook, I have to share with you the experience of the menorah. What is the artistic option of a creation that is one solid piece, versus the other option of piece by piece, assembled? Just as the creation of a single piece is an act of working with a “piece,” an “eshet,” of gold, a stone, that was struck or cut and formed into a shape, different from creation in the other method, in which the finished product can seemingly look the same, but the way it was made is different. It is made up of one part, onto which another part was put, and another part, until in the end they look like one united creation. It is not one solid piece. In marriage we come to live in one house, both and both. Two people built from carvings that revealed a single piece, and from additions that were taken piece by piece from life. Let’s transfer, for a moment, the love a child wants to give his or her parents to marital giving. At the basis of the relationship, check it, well, check it, all of us are made of one desire, each side wants to give to the other. To do good for the other. But what? Many of us block the other side from giving to us. Just as children can be blocked. We very much want to receive love, gifts, attention, respect. But if the other side does not give us exactly what we expected, we are disappointed, we make a face, we sigh. The other side feels it. And then little by little, they no longer want to give. Because what’s the point of trying? He and she understand, bit by bit, that they are not pleased with the giving. One of our goals in a marital relationship is to allow the other side to express giving in the style they know how. Just as our children want to love us, so do our spouses. Let them give the way they know how. Let them know that their giving is good. There, Libi is back.