Healthy Brain, Happy Life by Wendy Suzuki

then I had a problem. I knew I could not just start saying it without any explanation. It would be like suddenly starting to speak Russian to them instead of English for no reason.
    So I decided I would have to ask permission.
    Then I thought, Wait a minute! I’m a grown woman and I have to ask my parents’ permission to say I love you? That’s ridiculous, awkward, and uncomfortable. But then I realized that it wasn’t the awkwardness of asking permission that was bothering me. It was the fear that they might say no. And I knew that would make me feel awful.
    Well, the only way to find out was to ask. One Sunday night I gathered up all my courage before I made my regular call. Obviously, this was no ordinary Sunday night. This was going to be the night of “The Big Ask.” How these Sunday-night calls worked was that I would first talk to my mom and share all my news of the week, and then she would hand the phone off to my dad and I would share all over again with him. I was starting to get scared that I would chicken out and not ask my question, so I decided my theme for the phone call would be “Keep it light.” I would treat my request like any other request, like “Hey, Mom, what if we start talking on Monday nights instead of Sunday nights?” This was my strategy. It seemed better than “Hey, Mom, how about we try to change thousands of years of stoic and deeply ingrained Japanese culture in one fell swoop and start to say I love you to each other?”
    The first part of the call was like any other Sunday phone call. I asked her how her week was, and I told her about mine. I was especially upbeat and cheerful that night and somewhere in the middle of the conversation I launched in.
    “Hey, Mom, I realized we never say I love you on our phone calls. What do you think if we start saying that?”
    There was a pause in the conversation.
    A really long pause.
    I think I was holding my breath. But when she finally answered she said, “I think that’s a great idea!”
    I gulped air and breathed a huge, silent sigh of relief.
    Sticking to my theme of keeping it light, I replied, “That’s great !”
    We finished up our conversation about what we did that week, and I could feel a tension growing in our voices. We were like a couple of wild cougars warily circling each other. Why the tension? Because I think we both knew that it’s one thing to agree to say I love you and a very different thing to actually say I love you for the very first time.
    But it was my idea, so I took the bull by the horns and said, “Okayyeeeee” (in other words, get ready for it, Mom!).
    “ I love you ,” I said in a big, overexaggerated Disney-like voice to hide my discomfort.
    She replied “ I love you too, ” in an equally exaggerated voice.
    I won’t lie, it was very difficult and very awkward, but we did it! Thank goodness that was over!
    I knew that once my mom agreed my dad would agree too. During my conversation with him that night, I asked permission, he said yes, and we said our awkward I love you’s to each other, and the historic night of The Big Ask was over.
    I should have been so proud and happy when I hung up from that call. And I was, but I also burst out crying when I got off the phone. The fact was, nothing about what had happened was light. I had said I love you to my parents for the first time that night as an adult, and they had said it right back to me. With that, we had shifted the culture of my family—forever. It was moving, and my tears were mostly tears of joy.
    The following week, I was happy to see that saying I love you had already become much less awkward with my mom.
    Then it was Dad’s turn. I realized that there was a chance that he might not remember our conversation from the week before, so I was ready to remind him about our agreement.
    But that night, Dad surprised me.
    You see, that night, and every Sunday night conversation since, my dad has said I love you first. He remembered.
    You have