Have we finally reached an age where it’s OK, even cool, for men to have compassion? Saying “Yes” might save a life.
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When I was about six years old my parents let me pick a kitten out of a litter and said, when she was ready to wean, I could bring her home and call her mine. She was my joy and my comfort. She patted my cheek and gave me love bites on my chin when I was sad, she brought me dead mice when she thought I was hungry, she chased bits of string to make me laugh, and she howled like a banshee when I tried to learn the harmonica. But she wasn’t allowed to sleep in the house.
“No,” my mother told me, “she has a box in the laundry room. It’s too cold out there for her, your Daddy said so.”
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My father said she could come in because she was a good mouser, but he didn’t hold with animals sleeping in the house with people, so every night I gave her one last nose rub and regretfully, resentfully, set her cobby, furry body outside and shut the door.
Twelve years later I’d gone off to college, leaving her behind with all the regret I’d felt shutting her out of doors each night. But that winter I was home for a visit, happily holding the aging cat in my arms, and chatting with my mother late into the night. When I finally admitted it was time to sleep I started for the door. “No,” my mother told me, “she has a box in the laundry room. It’s too cold out there for her, your Daddy said so.”
We gave each other a secret smile, and I put Twinkletoes in her cozy bed in the laundry room and went to my childhood room with tears in my eyes and a smile in my heart.
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I have never loved my father more than that moment when I learned he wept for my cat, the cat he’d never let anyone see him petting, the cat he could only allow himself to value because she kept the grain bins free of rodents.
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By Spring we knew it was time to let Twinkletoes go, and I wasn’t home. My father took the task of sitting with her as her kitty spirit left her tired frame. My mother reported that he sat for a long time, and that when he came back he still had tears in his eyes.
I have never loved my father more than that moment when I learned he wept for my cat, the cat he’d never let anyone see him petting, the cat he could only allow himself to value because she kept the grain bins free of rodents. That cat died. And he cried.
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I cry for him. Because with time and distance I see what hiding his feelings cost him. I see the root of his anger, his frustration, his fear. And much of it is grounded in insecurity, inadequacy, inability to just be himself without feeling not enough. Not tough enough, on himself or on me. Not strong enough, to control his world, or me. Not man enough, because men aren’t supposed have soft spots. And he did.
And I cry because he didn’t live long enough, for me to grow up enough, to say “you were enough and I understand.”
I wonder, sometimes, if the caring that he couldn’t show cost him his life. If the anger and fear, and rage at himself and me, just settled in his bones along with the cancer. It’s long been supposed that happy people live longer, and a Harvard School of Public Health study bears that out.
And I cry because he didn’t live long enough, for me to grow up enough, to say “you were enough and I understand.”
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That’s only one reason that I hope that “compassion is the new cool,” as this article by Wilhelm Cortez suggests. Because it would be cool if showing compassion was so cool that no man ever felt the need to hide his love for a pet, or a child, the way my father did.
I also hope that’s true for the sake of the boys who have become the”kid stars” of viral videos. Because it would be a shame to see them subjected to taunting and bullying for having an emotional moment immortalized on Youtube. Because those boys are the future fathers, who will love cats, and kids, and who should feel free to show that love openly without feeling less than a man.
Mostly I hope it’s true for my sake. Because I’ve seen first hand what holding back compassion can do, and it not only affects the men, it affects everyone who loves them.
So look for the compassion inside the men you know, acknowledge it, honor it, tell them that it makes them human. And human is all we ask any man to be.
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Photo: Flickr/Jerry