Mothers tend to be more direct. Fathers talk to other fathers

Host: The afternoon was slow, and the air in the small coffee shop shimmered with the low hum of conversation and espresso machines. Outside, leaves drifted down in lazy spirals, collecting near the curb like small piles of forgotten thoughts. The light through the window was a soft amber, the kind that turns the world into memory before the day is even over.

Jack sat by the window, his sleeves rolled up, a notebook open in front of him but empty — no words, just a faint coffee ring on the page. Across from him, Jeeny stirred her drink with absent rhythm, her eyes fixed on a pair of parents outside — a mother kneeling to tie her child’s shoe, a father watching, hands in pockets, saying something only the mother could hear.

Host: The quote — Richard Louv’s reflection — seemed to echo the scene itself: “Mothers tend to be more direct. Fathers talk to other fathers about their kids more metaphorically. It’s a different way of communication.”

Jack: (without looking up) “He’s right, you know. I’ve seen it a hundred times. My old man never said ‘I love you.’ He said things like, ‘You’ll need good boots for winter,’ or, ‘That car won’t fix itself.’ That was his way.”

Jeeny: (softly) “And did you understand it?”

Jack: “Eventually. When I was a kid, I thought it meant he didn’t care. Later, I realized it meant he cared too much to say it. Words like that — they made him… uncomfortable.”

Host: A long pause. The steam from Jeeny’s cup curled upward like a fading thought.

Jeeny: “But why should love have to hide behind metaphors? Why should fathers have to disguise tenderness as advice?”

Jack: “Because they’re built that way. Or maybe trained that way. The world tells men to build, to fix, to protect — not to feel. So they use language that sounds like function, not affection.”

Host: The rain began, slow and gentle, tracing the window with delicate lines. The sound filled the silence, soft but endless.

Jeeny: “It’s strange. Mothers say it all so openly. ‘Eat, you’ll get sick.’ ‘Call me when you get home.’ Every sentence means ‘I love you.’ They don’t hide it — they weave it into every word.”

Jack: (smirking) “Yeah. My mother used to yell, ‘Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll ruin your eyes.’ It took me twenty years to realize she just wanted me to stay close enough to hear her voice.”

Host: A faint smile crossed his face, the kind that hides behind old memories, shy and fleeting.

Jeeny: “And your father?”

Jack: “He’d hand me a wrench and say, ‘Hold this.’ That was his version of bonding. We’d fix engines in silence for hours. No words, no emotions. Just the sound of metal and grease and shared quiet.”

Jeeny: “You think that’s communication?”

Jack: “It’s the purest kind. No performance, no pity. Just two people doing something side by side. Sometimes love doesn’t need translation — it just needs presence.”

Host: A truck passed outside, spraying water against the curb. The child they had watched earlier ran ahead now, the mother calling out, the father jogging after with a half-smile.

Jeeny: “But don’t you think silence leaves too much room for misunderstanding? How many sons grow up thinking they were unloved simply because no one told them otherwise?”

Jack: “Plenty. Maybe most. But isn’t that what makes us who we are? We spend half our lives trying to decode our parents’ language. Mothers speak in warmth. Fathers — they speak in weather. You have to feel the temperature to know what they mean.”

Host: The light dimmed as a cloud passed over the sun. The room seemed smaller, cozier, filled with the intimate hush of two people thinking out loud.

Jeeny: “It shouldn’t be that hard, though. It shouldn’t take decades to know we were loved. Why do men think emotions have to be encrypted to be real?”

Jack: “Because vulnerability was never part of their education. It’s not in the textbooks of manhood. My father’s father was a war veteran. His love language was survival — food on the table, roof over our heads. Saying ‘I love you’ didn’t fit the vocabulary of the trenches.”

Jeeny: “And yet mothers learned to speak tenderness even when they were tired, even when they were carrying the same weight.”

Jack: “Because they were allowed to. Society forgives softness in women — it calls it virtue. In men, it calls it weakness.”

Host: The words hung in the air like smoke that refused to dissipate. Jeeny’s eyes softened, the anger fading into quiet empathy.

Jeeny: “Do you remember the first time you heard your father say something that felt… real?”

Jack: “Yeah. When I left home. He said, ‘Don’t forget your jacket.’”

Jeeny: (smiling) “That was it?”

Jack: “That was it. And yet… I remember it more vividly than any hug. It was cold that night. I wore that jacket for years.”

Host: The rain grew heavier now, a soft percussion against the glass. The coffee shop filled with the faint scent of wet pavement and bittersweet nostalgia.

Jeeny: “I think what Louv meant — it’s not that fathers don’t love as much. It’s that they love through symbols. A mother gives love like sunlight — direct, warm, constant. A father gives it like the moon — distant, reflected, but still there, guiding through the dark.”

Jack: (quietly) “That’s poetic. But sometimes moonlight isn’t enough.”

Jeeny: “Sometimes it has to be.”

Host: For a while, neither spoke. The rain softened again, the sound turning rhythmic, soothing. Jack leaned back, staring out the window, his reflection overlapping with the city beyond — a blurred mix of man and memory.

Jack: “You know, when I was a kid, I used to think he didn’t care. When he died, I found a drawer full of letters — never sent. He wrote about me. Every little thing. My grades, my first job, even the time I broke his radio. He just never knew how to say it out loud.”

Jeeny: (voice trembling) “He did say it, Jack. Just in a language you weren’t taught to hear.”

Host: The tears came slow — not of grief, but of recognition. The kind that cleans more than they wound.

Jack: “I guess we’re all translators, then — learning to read between silences.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what family really is — not perfect communication, but endless translation. Between mothers and fathers, fathers and sons, hearts and tongues.”

Host: The rain stopped. The clouds parted just enough for the late sunlight to spill across their table, glowing off the cups and spoons like small pieces of forgiveness.

Jack: “You think it ever changes? That men will learn to speak more openly?”

Jeeny: “Some already are. Every generation translates a little clearer. Maybe one day, a father will say, ‘I love you,’ and it won’t feel strange in his mouth.”

Jack: “And mothers?”

Jeeny: “They’ll still be the translators — of feeling into word, and word into home.”

Host: The camera pulled back slowly — the two figures sitting in a sea of soft light, the world outside returning to motion. The father and mother they had watched earlier crossed the street now, holding their child between them — one hand each, steady, balanced.

And as the scene faded, it became clear: love doesn’t speak in a single voice. It moves — through gestures, silences, warnings, and warmth.

Different languages, same truth.

The screen dimmed, leaving only the echo of rain, and the quiet certainty that in the space between words, love always finds a way to speak.