Wiping away tears

Recently, I saw a photo on Facebook of my brother with his daughter on her wedding day. If I'm not mistaken, she is crying and he is tenderly wiping away her tears.

Wiping away tears is an intimate experience shared between very few people. Yes, occasionally we’re honest enough to cry in front of people. But to let them into our personal space and allow them to physically touch us in order to comfort us marks an entirely different level of intimacy. Think about it: When was the last time someone actually touched your face and wiped away your tears? 

Dads and daughters

As a very little girl, I used to love playing in a closet just off the back stairs. If I closed the door, I felt alone in a house otherwise teeming with people but safe in a world full of potential adventure and hidden treasures: hundreds of worn paperbacks, my mother’s colored array of high-heeled shoes, and stylish hats in hatboxes from another era.

Exploring in the closet one day, I played with the door’s heavy, brass lock and accidentally locked myself in. Suddenly, I didn’t feel safe anymore. My fun and adventure quickly turned to fear and isolation--feelings mostly foreign to me as a child. Even those dearest to me couldn’t help me escape. My mother couldn’t explain how to unlatch the lock, my brothers couldn’t unlock it from the outside, and my sisters couldn’t comfort me with their kind words.

Leaving something behind

We write to change the world

Not long ago I listened to an audiobook called Sweet and Low, the story of the Brooklyn-based family that created the artificial sweetener by the same name. These family members, unfortunately, through time, allowed selfishness and greed to destroy generations of love and family ties. Author Rich Cohen, the inventor’s grandson whose own family was cut off from inheriting any money, realizes as he writes the memoir that his inheritance was not in the millions of dollars but in the story itself. Words and stories alone can be a legacy bequeathed.

You can't take it with you

Relationships matter above all else

A few days ago I went jogging and stopped in front of my parents’ former home in Holladay, Utah. This was their residence long after I left home for college, so I have relatively few memories attached to that place compared to those I have of Tanner Manor, my childhood home in Southern California. My children, however, remember it as their grandparents’ home. It’s the last place we saw my father alive. So, I stopped in front of the house for a brief moment to feel a little sad about good times never to be recaptured.