61
I was seven and sitting in church.
My mother gave me a lecture that morning about affection. She was trying to teach me how kind it was to give someone a hug when they needed it, or to hold their hand. She was always saying things like.
“Everyone and everything that God created needs love.” Well, I told her I understood and buttoned up my collared shirt. Off to church.
I was sandwiched between my mother and father and the pastor was rambling his sermon. Pastor Carl was a taller, skinny, old bald fellow. He had glasses and was by all accounts funny, though at the age of seven I was always
laughing and nodding a split second after everyone else, and only then so I could maybe fit in.
Before the service started my mother had taken me off to the side in a hallway. She knelt down a bit and looked me straight in the eyes, her curly brown hair falling clean and shiny down to her shoulders.
“Cash, I want you to hold your father’s hand today.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me.”
“Hold his hand?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I think you know why—”
I gulped.
I couldn’t remember ever holding my father’s hand once in my life.
I always believed that he didn’t like that sort of thing.
I hardly ever saw him holding hands with my mom, let alone me.
Well, each service lasted about an hour and so that was the time I was allotted.
There were twenty or so minutes of singing at the start, which I always prayed to God would go longer because, for my money, the songs were by far the best part.
Truth was, when the pastor got to speaking, I always found time to be torturously slow moving.
I was sitting in a metal fold up chair and shaking.
My heart was racing in my chest simply at the thought of reaching my little hand over six inches and grabbing my father’s.
What would he do? And what would happen to me? Terrified.
I thought about nothing during the entirety of the hour service but hands.
One big and one small.
I stole a couple glances at Ma and she gave me no reminder, though I knew she was watching, waiting.
Why did it mean so much to her? I made about a thousand glances at the clock.
It was creeping its way towards noon and that’d be the final bell.
If I didn’t do it before then…
Tick, tick, tick.
The second hand was on a mission.
I tell you my heart was in my throat.
I feared I would start sweating at any moment.
I felt in my bones that the pastor was coming to his final point so, at last, I held my breath and went for it.
I reached over soft handed and grabbed the inside of my father’s left hand.
His working hardened mitt.
In my fear and youth, I couldn’t even look him in the eye when I did it.
I stole one single glance.
He kept his gaze on the pastor who roamed the stage and gave us those valuable lessons on life.
There I hung, like a suspended tiny monkey on a branch, heart pounding and vulnerable to everything.
What on Earth would happen next? After a few seconds, he squeezed my hand back, and like I mentioned, that was the signal.
When he released me, I couldn’t help but look his way again.
Up and to his quieted, strangled soul.
He was looking down at me in one moment of softness and love.
It was brief, just a blink and he was back to the pastor again.
I followed his lead.
I remember my mother winking at me then, smiling wide.
I was very proud that morning.
I thought often about that look Dad gave me over the following years.
It’s indelible.
That look.
It’s woven itself into the fabric of my story even though I think I only saw it twice in my life.
I saw it in the church as a boy, when I held his hand, and I saw it as we sat in the gravel outside Jimmy’s, when we were covered in his blood, and he left me there for good.