Love Letter from Calif.–Opened at 6:48 p.m., Pamper-Her-Friday:
My Love,
My father died at 28; my mother, at the time, was carrying me. Tragic. Never saw him breathing, walking, building, chastising, guiding, laughing. Loving. God, I never saw my father love my mother–both in words and touch. I shed tears as I write this because.
But–‘but’ being the operative word here–when I watch my mother reminisce on time past, her eyes rivet speaking of him. When 2 a.m. came and my sister was crying in her cradle, he’d tell mother, “Stay put, I’ll get her.” My mother lay in bed, exhausted from the relentlessness of the day, while he would calm and cuddle my sister. And this wasn’t a one-off event; he was faithful in his dedication.
I never saw it. Jesus Christ, I never saw it. Never saw him touch and comfort what he’d helped give life to. Touch. Just imagine, if he’d touched my sister tenderly enough to tide her 2 a.m. tears, just imagine what his touch meant to my mother.
Can a man be fatherly–yet instinctively mother-like? Especially when the occasion requires the duality?
I shed tears as I write this.
Not necessarily of sadness, tears. But inherited tears. Bequeathed tears from a man, for a man, who didn’t know, instructively, what he was doing, but did it perhaps better, more giftedly, more naturally, more tenderly than most men born to this life.
I’m not sure who taught him. I don’t know who taught him. Perhaps his father, his grandfather, an uncle, a friend’s father. His mother? Maybe he saw what the right touch elicited from his own mother, what her eyes revealed when she spoke of a certain gentleman, a certain tenderman, or perhaps a toughman who’d lost his share of good women and learned–through trial, error, and redemption–that touch is of utmost importance to woman-treating.
Touch is vital.
I never saw my father touch my mother. But, I swear, her eyes, in reminiscence, educate and inform me like no photo or book or letter or oral confession can nor ever will. My father was a touch artist of the highest order. Did he know it? Did my mother know it at the time, while he still walked this earth? Or did it become so strikingly evident only “after” God called him home?
When my trademark lawyer asked me why I wanted to trademark Pamper-Her-Friday–he seemed to assign no intrinsic value or human power to my intent–I said simply:
‘For my father.’
He fell deafly silent and lowered his eyes in a moment of conscious misunderstanding, but when he returned his gaze to me, I knew, we knew, what the meaning was. Its eternal power.
Perhaps he had a father, similar. It’s powerful–touch.
I wanna touch you tonight. On this occasion of Pamper-Her-Friday.
In honor of my father. For my father. And mother. My mother and father.
I wasn’t taught how to touch a woman.
But I was bequeathed the knowledge. The innate tenderness.
Yes, I’m dysfunctional. Forgive me my dysfunction. But let me hold you tonight to make up for the lacking.
It’s Pamper-Her-Friday. I want to hold you. I wanna touch you. Like no one else is capable.
I want to share my inheritance.
With you and no one else.
Tonight. And evermore.
All My Love,
Rg2
***
The truest, most timeless meaning of pampering. -Rg2
© 2012 Pamper-Her-Friday by Rg2®
Val Gamble
December 2, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Awesome. So touchingly awesome.
LikeLike