What changed: Daniel talks about my work. Not elaborately, not with a script, just normally, the way you talk about your spouse’s work when someone asks. At a family dinner in late summer, his uncle Richard asked how things were going and Daniel said something about a client Rachel was working with, a facilities management company in Cincinnati, and how the project had gone well. He said it the way you say things that are normal and established. Richard nodded. That was it.
Beth and I have had three lunches. They have been genuine in a way that our previous interactions were not, because now we know something real about each other instead of operating through the buffer of what Daniel had said. She has a particular dry wit that I had never encountered before. We talk about her kids and my projects and occasionally about her mother, who is also a piece of work in entirely different ways that are not this story.
Marian and I have had two real conversations, both of which she initiated. One was about the community meal program I had been doing some advisory work for; she had questions about the logistics and the questions were intelligent and I enjoyed talking about it. One was about a management problem she was having with a volunteer committee she runs, and I gave her some thoughts, and she was grateful in a specific rather than a generic way. We are building something that is still new but is real.