A Father’s Tenderness

This memory has taught me a valuable laughter lesson.

When I was about nine years old wandering the fields at the end of our street, I saw a beautiful red rose and immediately intended to take it home to my mom. I will bring her a beautiful thing and token of my love.

As I cut the stem of the flower, my newly sharpened pocket knife slipped and sliced my thumbnail from the top to bottom. Pain and blood carried me running home crying.

I ran into the house where mom, dad and another couple were talking and sipping drinks at the kitchen table. I was crying loudly, holding my cut thumb with my other hand and they stopped to pay attention. I held out my bleeding thumb to my father, knowing he could fix it.

He took my arm, held it where he could see my thumb and then looked around the table with a smile. He looked back at me and laughed said “Spit on it” and spit on it. Mom got up and came around the table, holding me close and steered me towards the bathroom saying “Come on honey, we’ll get you fixed up”.

Through mom’s comfort I felt soothing replacing hurt & humiliation. What I wanted and needed from my father somehow got lost in his sense of humor.

When I started writing this blog my motivation was to relate a recennt family conversation where one family member’s humor was hurtful for another’s. There was a tinge of anger and resentment in this body. I felt the anger and knew this was a chance to heal a wound.

Sitting with the feeling of recent family pain, being quiet and breathing, I found myself in the memory related above.

Six decades later the cut thumb memory had enough energy to emerge and ask again for care, for compassion. Today’s hurt from family humor awoke a memory still in pain and needing compassion.

Good is ever-available for us to heal wounds and commit to healing. Healing means being courage long enough to embrace pain, whether it’s our’s or others’.

Sharing this memory with you has become a way of accepting my father in that moment. This event was recorded in my conscious ego and has waited there for safety, until today. As an adult father, older by thirty or so years than dad in that moment, I am able to bring understanding and forgiveness, acceptance in to my being.

Sharing with you dissolved my sense of disapproval. Tracking and re-opening a nine year old’s pain is a belief that healing is always possible. Today’s hurts and healings can help us recover from cuts we may not remember until we feel a similar emotion today.

My dad’s rough humor now isn’t a sense of disapproval by him. I see it as his best available effort to deal with my sliced thumb. Fortunately mom was there to pick up with feminine energy where the masculine dropped off.

Now I no longer feel a separation from dad’s best love. I’ve seen and owned my denial being loved by both him and me. I’ve grown from that moment to this, of accepting my family members who may believe they need humor to protect themselves.

Often clients in counseling sessions are looking for understanding that didn’t happen in their childhoods. If you learned to ignore your own hurts or those of others with laughter, please consider that laughter is not always the best medicine.

Moment by moment we all perceive the world and what is happening. With these perceptions we choose directions for our thoughts, words and actions.

Feeling and thinking direct most of our experiences. What have you experienced that you didn’t feel and think, think and feel your way through? Even at this moment, you are experiencing thoughts and feelings, each nudging the other towards behaviors for the body to perform.

Emotions encourage or discourage……one experience feels beneficial, keep going. ANother feels confusing or hurtful, stop. Emotions are life’s wisdom guiding us, helping us find the life we’re here to live, with all its discouragements and rewards

By design our bodies collect, categorize and store information into patterns we call habits. Physical, emotional and mental responses which are part of our routines, and no longer require thought. The way we brush our teeth without really paying attention is an example.

No unusual or challenging claims here, just simple description of human behavior.

SO LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT HUMOR

One way of negotiating this ever shifting life is our sense and habit of using humor and laughter. Generally humor means amusement, harmless observation of life with a sense of enjoyment. This can be a positive experience by intent. Smiles and laughter can help with difficulties. But is it possible that our humor could be mis-taken by someone else?

If we spill a drink and our friend laughs, we might instantly feel bad, embarrassed. We might interpret their laughter as making us worth less. Our value might shrink or even disappear into an imagined world with no loving connection to our companion.

At the same time, our friend’s laughter likely felt good for them. Perhaps they laughed because they done the same thing and they felt their embarrassment relieved. In this example my intention is to point out the possibility of humor being confusing for someone in pain.

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This post was previously published on THEFATHERCONNECTION.WORDPRESS.COM.

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