It used to be that a person driving in a car alone, grinning broadly, sobbing or staring rapt and open mouthed would be considered a little loony. People would quickly glance away before the nose picking began. Today we assume a Bluetooth is in the ear we can’t see. So I can get away with reactions more animated than should be allowed, even in the semi-public bubble of a car interior. When I drive, I listen and emote accordingly to books on CD. This week I knew I had a long drive to Indianapolis so I had four choices scattered around the car: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Special Topics on Calamity Physics, The Portable Atheist and a book of essays titled Grace Eventuallyby Anne Lamott. The morning of my trip I pondered my selections. I had listened to Harry a hundred times, couldn’t remember where I had left off in the Calamity book, 6:00 a.m. seems way too early not to believe in God, so I put in Anne Lamott.  

Her voice is flat, slightly nasal, she whistles slightly on certain sounds. She is also crystal cut articulate and inexplicably expressive. Accustomed to hearing out-of-work actors ham their way through various texts, I was taken aback for about seven seconds. Then I realized that I was having one of those book moments. This is where the author must know me and lived in my head for some length of time before writing the clues to my entire being in a story that I needed to hear or read at exactly that moment. I sat in partially caffeinated astonishment and listened while she identified so many loose, raw, frayed, sore ends and brought the edges together with a daub of intellectual Neosporin and empathic Band-Aids.

I did not expect to connect with her reading or writing to such an extent. Typically it is easier for me to process meaningful content when I am holding a real book, solid paper and ink. I listen to books on CD for self improvement, like lifting barbells or learning scales on the piano, purely medicinal.  I practice listening in the car for when I get out of the car and have to interact with live humans. I have a history of trouble with talking and ironically just as much trouble concentrating on other people’s talking.

The trouble is that I stutter. All speakers stumble or repeat, but at some point the intensity and frequency cross a line separating normal from a diagnosis. As a kid the label became apparent every time I spoke. Now it is more intermittent. Stuttering has settled to the bottom of my speech patterns like dirt, tamped down, until a breeze of anxiety or a gust of circumstance stirs up a choking cloud of dust. A pause will be a little too long; the twist of my mouth won’t quite match the emitting staccato. It is uncomfortable for everyone when they figure it out, as if my skirt flew up to reveal bad underwear. Although I have become more fluent with age and confidence, a few side effects linger. Aside from the obvious, stuttering kids do not like silence – silence equals block – and they do not listen well. Another person talking is time to prepare and organize for the next attempt at speech. Shuffling through imaginary flash cards to find the right combinations, we think: are they done? No? Great, then switch out toast for wheat bread, say butter instead of jam, eggs are OK but forget the detail about juice. Reality is edited and accuracy is only valid if the words don’t stick to our teeth.

My vocabulary and I got away with this for years. Smiling, pretending to pay attention, meanwhile a thesaurus of pathology going on below the nod. Then it became professionally important for me to gather more information before I blurted out the first thing I could say without stuttering. I needed a broader skill set to achieve real expertise in my field and this required that I learn to listen to people who were speaking to me more than I thought about what to say next. This scared me, without my constant mental manipulation, I risked exposure and verbal failure.

But I was determined to learn. So I developed listening strategies. I asked questions to buy time. I forced myself to pause and collect my thoughts after the speaker was done speaking in spite of the stomach ache inducing minutes of silence. I tried to notice body language, something I never had the energy to observe before. I allowed myself to say, “Can you explain that again?” or “I did not quite understand” instead of assuming what they meant because it was enough to launch my next statement. I forgave myself when my response wasn’t perfectly formed on the first try. I encouraged people to tell me stories because they maintain my focus more than explanations. And I began listening to CDs in the car to practice keeping my mind from drifting. I am not always successful and sometimes worse for having attempted goat (hard g) when I should have said barnyard animal with small horns and a beard (all soft breathy sounds). But there is always the next conversation.

Halfway between here and there in my long drive, I started thinking about what might happen when I arrived at my destination. I would leave Anne in the car. She would wish me well, having kept me limber and quiet, ready. Walking into the store, from one dialogue to another, I could hear new essays. People will tell me how they made a customer happy or frustrated, how much they like or dislike a co-worker, about their children or puppies, their latest love or fling, a book they just know I will love. My first urge will be to solve or compare in homilies containing long vowels and devoid of the letter d. But I will resist. And in about seven seconds, I will have an epiphany like the one in my car. One of those moments where the speaker must know me and lived in my head for some length of time before naming the clues to my entire being in a story that I needed to hear at exactly that moment. Unexpectedly, I will also hear them stammer, stumbling over words that are hard for them, pausing, blocking, desperate to be heard, worried about being understood. I might realize that the difference between us isn’t very different when we are really paying attention. True listening, calming our internal din, intent and open to what the other is conveying in words and movement and space, can have surprising echoes, familiar and often comforting.   

But I was still driving. On the third CD, Anne described eating the “crispy toes” off an apple fritter. I am sure a passerby could see me licking my lips through the car window. My mouth full of dough and frosting, my hungry head expanding, listening for more.