John Jay O’Connor III grew up in San Francisco. His family was local royalty. He went to college at Stanford, just down the road, and returned there for law school as well. So how did the O’Connors end up in Phoenix? It wasn’t because he wanted to be close to the family of his new wife, Sandra Day O’Connor—who lived as far east as one could get in Arizona, on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. It certainly wasn’t because Phoenix was a bustling metropolis or a paragon of culture—not in the late 1950s, anyway.
The answer was simple. He didn’t want to be very close to his family. As he later reflected: “My mother was a very critical woman, and I did not want to listen to her time and again.”
We all want great things for our children . . . but most of all, especially when we’re older, we’re going to want them to be close to us. How can we increase our chances of that? How can we do our best to ensure the existence of that lovely, crowded table we talked about the other day? By being pleasant to be around. By not making our anxieties and fears our kids’ problem. By loving them as much as we push them. By helping them be who they are . . . not what we think they should be. By asking ourselves, every time we feel like criticizing or judging or starting an argument, Is this worth what I am about to withdraw from our relationship? By putting them first, but not putting everything on them, we might one day find them as close to us at our table as they are close to our hearts.