Listening is healing, listening is love

Richard Flanagan, a marvellous writer, describes in his recently published memoir Question 7 how he was the favourite of his grandmother Mate. Her smell repelled him, and he didn’t like the way she “lorded it” over her daughter, Flanagan’s mother. He writes:“I was Mate’s favourite. I don’t know why. It was clear that religion, which in her old age mattered greatly, was of no interest to me. Nor was I a remarkable child in any sense. Among her numerous grandchildren—I have over fifty first cousins—many were far more vivacious, attractive, charming, clever, athletic, and interesting. But when she told me things I listened.”Flanagan’s paragraph is contradictory in that he writes at the beginning that he doesn’t know why he was Mate’s favourite, but then in the last sentence he tells us why: “But when she told me things I listened.” There is no greater gift than to be listened to….
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