The loves of our lives ~ Malinda Words

This happened almost two decades ago. It was a game, one could say, that a father played with his daughter. He was no special father but for him the little girl was special. A princes, no less. He adored her and would want to smother her with kisses all the time.

The problem was that the little girl wasn’t too interested in that kind of affection. The father, in a weak moment, insisted that it was his right to hug her whenever he wanted. The girl, just two years old, wasn’t pleased and her displeasure showed on her face.

He noticed. He apologised. And then he explained.

‘It’s like this. I know that you don’t like being cuddled, but I can’t stop my body. Look, look, see how my hands reach out to you?’

Then he slapped one of his arms and said, ‘hey, body, this girl doesn’t enjoy being cuddled, so just leave her alone, ok?’

She was amused. So he said, ‘shall we teach the body how to behave?’

She liked that. So the father lectured his body thus:

‘Now this girl may allow you to hug her, but only when she wants. You have to ask her permission, understand?’

She was chuckling.

‘Let’s demonstrate. Watch how I do it.’

Then he said, ‘Baby, I would like to give you a hug, would you mind?’

She didn’t. So he held her close. And she was happy to be showered with love.

So they played this game for a while. And then, this girl who was more mind than body, preferring conversation to hugs and kisses, asked him, ‘Appachchi, now you are holding me; is it you or is it your body?’

‘It’s me, baby, just me,’ he said softly, looking into her beautiful eyes.

Maybe it happened a few hours later or on the following day or perhaps not long after this question was put to him, but she had a follow-up query: ‘when you hug, is it me you are holding or is it my body?’

He was naturally amazed by the levels of abstraction that his two year old daughter was capable of inhabiting. He just laughed. He hugged her (without permission) and she let him have his moment of bliss.

So the years passed. They had their quarrels, they had their moments, this father and this daughter. He didn’t stop wanting to hug her but he held himself back most times. Her mind raced well ahead of his. He was slow and slow-witted. She was sharp and quick. Together they found ways of expressing objection and remorse without saying the words. He indulged her no end and she made sure her tears were for the most part private. He knew, but didn’t tell her.

‘The love of your life!’ That’s what her mother thought it was. Only partly correct. For he had another daughter, younger to Ms Cerebral, ever ready to be cuddled and absolutely uninterested in the metaphysical aspects of demonstrating affection. Until of course she became a teenager and probably preferred to hear the words ‘I love you’ from someone else, preferred to be held by someone else, as it happens all the time.

There were moments, however, when she relented and permitted a hug, moments when she wanted to talk about relationships, the attendant minefields, the tricks and traps of language, the million and one ways in which things can be wrecked and the fact that you can salvage something beautiful even from a wreck.

She was a listener for the most part. Her mind raced but she kept most of it to herself. And she would say ‘listening to you is like watching a documentary.’

And that’s when he slipped. He expressed his undying and infinite love for this second girl. He just couldn’t stop. Until she stopped him: ‘now you are like a sitcom!’ He just couldn't help it. She provoked the clown in him. She knew, though. For all the antics, all the clowning, the slippage into sitcom mode, there can be no purer love. Nothing more tender.

So, two decades later, this father watches these two girls with as much pride as he did when they were less ready to protest his love and with the same anxiety. From a distance. From distances determined by the loves of his life. They know. He knows. And there can be no greater poetry, he feels.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

04 June 2023

The loves of our lives

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