Parental Advisory
The assignment is the "Ice Breaker." The goal is simple: stand up for four to six minutes and share something personal that introduces you to the group.
The process of crafting this first speech felt surprisingly monumental. It brought back all the old anxieties of writing a college paper: the perfectionism, the agonizing over every word, the desire to get it just right. That level of effort meant I had to choose a topic that was worthy of it, one that came from a place of genuine substance. In other words, one that came from the heart.
My mind didn't go to my career or my hobbies. It went to a recent experience that had been occupying a lot of my thoughts: the challenge, and the profound reward, of trying to connect with my aging parents in a new way.
I wanted to tell a story that felt true to my core values - one about family, connection, and what it really means to be present with the people we love.
Here's the speech I wrote and delivered.
"Parental Advisory: Raw, Uncensored, and On the Record"
Do you really know your parents? I thought I did. But as mine entered their 80s, I began to feel a growing sense of urgency, a fear that entire chapters of their lives were about to be lost to time.
I realized I knew them as "Mom" and "Dad," but how well did I know them as people?
And getting them to try something new? That often feels like diplomatic negotiations with a very charming, very stubborn, tiny nation.
My mom is the Minister of Refusal. This isn't a new appointment - back in high school, her response to my debate team invitation was a classic: "Why would I want to watch two people argue?"
My dad is the Secretary of Deflection, always ready with a Soviet-era joke to lighten the mood and change the subject.
And I came to the table with generous terms! A new restaurant? My treat. "Too spicy!" A fully-funded vacation to Hawaii? All expenses paid, you just have to show up. "Too hot!" Ok, how about Iceland? "Too cold!"
It was exasperating. I was the diplomat trying to build a bridge, and they were perfectly happy inside their comfortable fortress. Our time together was wonderful, but it was confined to their kitchen table - and I knew it was only becoming more precious. I needed to find a different key, for a different kind of door.
A few days later, I was drinking my morning coffee and scrolling online when an ad caught my eye. I’m the guy who never clicks on internet ads. Except for once. The game was called "Parents are Human," and the premise was simple: a deck of cards with questions - one chili pepper for safe, two for spicy - and everyone has to answer.
So, at our next get-together, I sat them down, and put my phone on the table to record. I'll never forget my mom's reaction. She looked at the phone, then at me, scrunched her nose, and asked…
"Why?"
"What do you mean, 'Why?!'"
It wasn't just skepticism. It was her familiar, deep-seated aversion to anything that might nudge her out of her comfort zone. For a moment, I felt a wave of frustration. Here I was, holding the key to a different door, and my first attempt to turn it was met with doubt. But I took a breath and hit "record".
The first few questions were light. But over 10 hour-long sessions, something shifted. I made a conscious effort to just listen. My calm presence seemed to put them at ease, and the real stories began to flow.
We talked about their childhoods in the Soviet Union, their deepest fears, their philosophies on life. I heard my dad say, his voice thick with emotion I’d rarely witnessed,
"My joy is that I left that country, and that you were born here."
My mom confessed, "I should have gone to those debates." My first instinct was to make a joke, to lighten the heavy air, but she looked right at me, her eyes full of a pain decades old, and said,
"It weighs on me."
These weren't just answers - they were windows. For the first time, I was seeing the world through their eyes.
These conversations were in Russian, and I painstakingly transcribed and translated them all - wanting to preserve their stories, not just for me, but for a future I hoped to build.
Fast forward a bit. I was back here in the Bay Area, having dinner with two people very close to me, my sister-in-law, Sharmila, and her partner, Thomas. I told them about the game and pulled up a transcript on my phone.
Hesitantly, I asked, "Want to hear an excerpt?"
As I started reading, I remember glancing up, seeing their... well, fairly stoic faces. And that little voice in my head started: "Oh no, Mark. You’re boring them. This is too personal, too niche. Abort mission!" I almost stopped. But I kept reading.
When I finally trailed off, ready to apologize for rambling, I saw Sharmila raise a hand to her eye. Her voice was thick with emotion when she spoke.
"Marky, that was so beautiful. You should turn this into a book one day."
And then they shared why it hit them so hard: with both their own parents gone, they wished they’d had the chance to do something similar, to capture those stories before it was too late.
In that moment, a couple of things became clear. First: note to self, when you're absolutely convinced you're boring people to tears, you might just be making them cry for a completely different reason.
And second, that the simple act of asking and truly listening can unlock connections deeper than we ever expect. Seeing the world through their eyes for just a moment has been the most incredible journey. The trip to Hawaii can wait. Their stories couldn't.
And my mom? She still asks "...Why?" But now, I hear it differently. It's not always a wall being put up. Sometimes, it's the sound of a door cautiously creaking open.
Delivering this speech was a profound experience.
What followed was equally profound, but in ways I didn't anticipate. In my next post, I'll explore how the response to this very personal story taught me something crucial about what we value in public and what we cherish in private.
Update: I've written a follow-up reflection on the experience of sharing this speech. You can read it here.