Lessons in Unexpected Tenderness
By Dani Moreno specially written for “Tenderness” by Piano Del Cuore.
I’m not sure I would have simply wanted to tell my story, but I would have loved to tell hers. Somehow though, I know the right story to tell is ours, even if it doesn’t exactly belong to the two of us. It is a story about the things we gave each other and eventually offered to the world around us. The little things, the brilliant moments, even those that hurt but, most importantly, about the tenderness that made us who we are.
The first couple of years of my life were only soft enough to keep an infant alive. But as soon as my body was firm enough, I was brought up into a life cold and rough as stone. My mother was strict, and my father was careless, and I was a child that believed that was the norm… until I met her. She was my neighbor and, since I was prone to escaping my parents, we quickly crossed paths. Imagine my surprise, a kid raised by fists and orders, when I met a girl made of smiles and cheek kisses. She was fascinating right from the beginning. What kind of four-year-old girl carries with her a bag with candy and bandaids everywhere she goes? In the blink of an eye, life wasn’t about my parents’ yells, it was all about this curly-haired girl putting bandaids over my scratched knees and sharing her candy with me when I caught a ladybug for her in her garden.
Then we were ambushed by our teenage years. Since I was roughened up by my parents, I faced puberty with my fists raised, knowing I’d always have by my side my girl with the sweets and the bandaids. But, even if I couldn’t see it at the time, I became just as essential to her. I thought kindness looked just one way, but I was wrong, she told me later. She explained the way she found gentleness in me. In me! I thought, a boy that only knew tenderness because she overflowed with it. Well, it just so happened that my girl didn’t know how to redirect that stream of sympathy inward. She told me about teenage years marked by the sharpness of mirrors, the cruelty only teenage girls are capable of, and the way her own body was the unkindest of them all. But I didn’t notice at the time. I was used to kissing her cheek, holding her hand, hugging her body, and calling her beautiful like it was second nature to me. I didn’t even phantom the idea of romance yet. Because I never second-guessed her beauty, slowly but surely she stopped second-guessing herself too. One day she confessed to me it wasn’t about the fact that I would have fought with my life to defend her. It was more about sitting in silence with her on my lap, never once mentioning her weight, never once making her doubt I’d always be there for her.
My girl showed me tenderness existed, and I showed her she deserved it in equal measure. This was, in some way, a secret we shared. Partially, because we never discussed it, we never put a name to it. We just felt the way we have received something precious from the other one, a gift rare and wonderful that gave us the courage to face the world in the best way possible. Because when you don’t overthink the existence of kindness, it comes out of you naturally, and you spread it everywhere you go.
This kindness went everywhere with us. When we started college, we discovered our favorite dates involved nature, and we ended up involved in hiking and ecologic groups, learning first aid, planting trees. I was still scratching my knees, and she still carried the bandaids. Then we started working, our car was filled to the brim with her coworkers, we drove them home, we shared coffee, we listened, we knew how to be friends and we were still surprised when someone other than each other showed us gratitude for something that came so naturally to us.
Our love blossomed like a wild garden, with equal measures of patience and surprises, caution and excitement, safety and joy. We grew old proudly. I never once mentioned her wrinkles and she never complained about my new health conditions. We raised our children with all the warmth that I never received and the confidence she hadn’t suspected existed. When the time came, we attended friend’s funerals calmly, with a quiet understanding of when to listen, to talk, or to embrace even perfect strangers in our arms.
Throughout our lives, my girl and I were witnesses of not only good things. Just like my childhood was rough and her teenage years were ferocious, adulthood had the ability to be frightening. We heard our friends light, we suffered the violence of strangers, we observed the cruelty of corporations, the flames behind presidential podiums. But we never held a monopoly on gentleness, and the most rewarding thing was to watch from afar. To hear friends apologize, experience the selfishness of strangers, observe the empathy of communities, and the moments of connection of the entire human race.
I would say that, in the end, it was all good. But, I don’t really believe this is the end. Because every single day I wake up and make coffee for her, and she reminds me of my meds, and I hold her hand, and she brushes my hair, and when we smile at each other, all over the globe there are children, grandchildren and friends smiling back at us. I believe that our love will never end, and the tenderness that we gave and received from each other and the world will never, ever end.
