10:26 a.m. - Saturday, Feb. 21, 2004
Am I a Bad Person?
My father doesn�t know what I did for him. He thinks I gave him a foot rub on each of the three nights he stayed with me. In a way, he�s right. I did hold his feet, touch them, and massage them after stimulating all of the pressure points I know. That was a great gift to him. In seventy-five years, he has never had a foot massage. Aside from formal hugs, in fifty years, he has never touched me, and I have never in my life touched him. So a foot rub in candle light, with incense and soft music from his new daughter was a novelty all by itself.
There was a gift much deeper, though. Deeper, in fact, on two different levels. On one of these, I gave him the gift of my humility. I sat at his feet much like Jesus sat at the feet of his disciples and washed his feet in exactly the same way that Jesus did. And in doing so, I honored him as my father. I acknowledged without words his role as a creator of my life and the sustenance he provided during the time I couldn�t provide for myself. There is a lot to be critical of about my life, including the manner in which I was raised, but there�s also a certain debt to be acknowledged. Without y father I would not have been created. Without him, I would not have survived.
Deeper still, on a level he will never understand, was the gift of my energy. I had a difficult time at first. My father is very rigid in thought and deed. His body mirrors that rigidity. I had to teach him how to relax. But in the process, while I touched him with my hands for nearly two hours each night, I accepted his pain, almost as completely as I accept pain on the whipping cross. There really is a spiritual side to the human experience, and it comes with a form of energy. As I touched him, I exchanged that spiritual energy with him, drawing off his rigidity, his stress and his fear of emotion and contact, and I replaced it with a portion of the energy I am newly finding in myself. I could feel that exchange, and so could he, even if he could never describe or even admit it. And by the third night, he had learned to relax. He learned that he was safe with me and that he could give himself to me. I was gratified to see that my gifts were accepted on all three levels.
I also gave him the gift of sleep. Like me, he is plagued by an inability to sleep. For him, it�s a little known affliction called �restless leg syndrome�. It�s a tortuous condition in which he finds it impossible to keep his legs still. So on each of the three nights, I helped him go through his body, muscle by muscle, making an effort to relax each one and keep it so. In short, I hypnotized him and gave him the suggestion that he would enjoy each night, the very best sleep he had ever had in his whole life. And this he dutifully did. He awoke each morning in amazement that he had not had even a hint of his malady. He had slept right through the night and awaken fresh and renewed. ON the last night, he even forgot to take his medications and still had none of the torment he has lived with for so many years.
So it was a good visit for him. I gave him all of myself, night and day and then sent him home in better condition than when he arrived.
I was also very cruel to him.
I treated his feet, but I didn�t explain how. I taught him how to relax, but not how to relax by himself. I gave him three nights of bliss and then sent him home with no hope of more. I believe with all my heart that in the early hours of the morning tomorrow, he will be pacing the kitchen, wishing he could sleep free of his rebellious legs. I did this, and I did it knowingly. I�m not proud of myself, yet I do feel somehow satisfied.
I guess I gave him a small glimpse of the person I am; Of the person he is missing in his life.
You see, one of the very first statements he made to me, before we even had left the airport was that his wife was number one in his life. The revelation which was no revelation came suddenly and out of context. I don�t know why he felt he had to say it. When I heard it for the fourth time, though, I finally asked him:
�Well Dad, then who is number two?�
His answer: �I don�t know. I guess I haven�t gotten that far�.
His answer only reinforced to me that my father�s children are not even number two to him. We�� I�� occupy no place on his list. Like a sick greyhound, I am scratched from the race.
So perhaps my cruelty is justified. Maybe I can be excused for giving such kindness and then snatching it away.
Vindication isn�t always a sin and revenge can sometimes be a sweet vice indeed.
Happy Thoughts, Deep Breaths,
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