The moment he took my face in his hands, gingerly, bending down to kiss me for the very first time, I knew I was hooked. The overwhelming sensation of this big, barrel-chested man I was getting to know was this… tenderness. And it… he… took my breath away.
This wasn’t the only time he would touch my face — an intimate gesture, to be sure — conveying more than words ever could.
He was tender at each parting and when we met again, he was tender consoling me after the death of my father, and he was tender as the prelude to a pleasurable evening of… let’s call it… “adult time.”
This isn’t to say that he wasn’t also full of mirth and mischief; he was. Tenderness was simply the frosting on our mutual cake, and I am sorry to say, rarely so exquisitely expressed in the relationships, including marriage, that came after.
That particular love affair extended across an ocean and over the course of more than a year, both of us regularly traversing the Atlantic on business, our frequent visits enabling the relationship to flourish. Eventually, our romance resolved into friendship, though I always smile recalling the precise place and time — and delight — of that first tender kiss.
Tenderness — Potent Aphrodisiac and More
Doesn’t tenderness underscore our universal vulnerability, and between lovers, our willingness to let fall our usual pretense and protections? Isn’t tenderness that lingers in a kiss or in fingertips taking their tantalizing time irresistible in inciting increasing intimacy?
Relationships between adults are not the only scenarios in which tenderness — physical tenderness — proves to be an intoxicant or arouses an intense emotional response. Doesn’t tenderness also express our capacity for caring and kindness, and perhaps our retention of innocence? Can’t we be tender in our dealings with friends, with parents or children, and with strangers in need or distress?
Why are expressions of tenderness so potent for some of us? Is it the contrast of gentleness versus our more habitual hurried, harried existence and our fast-talking, posturing, impersonal interactions with each other? Are we too distracted to be tender? Too rushed? Wasn’t there a reason that “Love Me Tender” made an impression — beyond the King’s oozing voice and gyrating hips?
Have we abandoned our understanding of how romantic, how sympathetic, and how connective acts of concern, compassion, and warmth can be? Isn’t that what tenderness is all about?
Tenderness Between Parent and Child
Beyond a lover’s tender touch, don’t we consider the relationship between parent and child, especially an infant or a young child, the very picture of tenderness? Doesn’t tenderness tug at our heartstrings when we encounter it? How many women have fallen more deeply in love with their husbands when they see them cradling their newborns, or gently wiping away their toddler’s tears after a tumble? How many of us gaze at our sons and daughters as they sleep, even if they are teens or young adults, still sentimentally inclined to see them as children, finding ourselves overwhelmed by feelings of tenderness?
For that matter, a small child staring in wonder at a brand new baby brother or sister elicits tender feelings in the parent who looks on. And similarly, don’t we feel filled with wonder watching our little ones happily playing together?
The notion of tenderness is broader, of course. Not only do we think of a voice, a glance, or a scene as capable of expressing tenderness; the word itself may be suggestive of youth and innocence, as in “tender age,” conjuring vulnerability which we expect in the very young, and which is disarming in those who are older.
One very special sort of tenderness — that between parent and child — is not reserved solely for looking to our next generation. We feel tenderly toward our elders as they begin to age, requiring greater compassion from us; perhaps this occurs as we experience more childlike fragility in them.
The Healing Power of (Tender) Dreams
I have no memories of tender moments between myself and my mother when I was growing up much less in adulthood — on the contrary, ours was a lifelong contentious relationship. But I will share this. Last night I dreamed that I walked through the open yellow door into the house where I was raised, not expecting to see my mother, yet not entirely aware that she had passed away years ago. As I entered the kitchen — the room where most activities (and arguments) took place in our household — there she was. I was myself as I am now; she was herself at roughly my age though somehow, she seemed older.
I was happy to see her. We embraced. She held me in her arms, firmly. I held her with equal strength. Both of us were silent.
In the quiet, in the warmth of that embrace, all the bitterness between us seemed to drift away and in its place, I felt an exchange of enormous tenderness. And then I woke, the word itself, tenderness, tingling on the tip of my tongue.
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What a beautiful post, DA. My mum is a very strong-minded woman, and she and I have always had a complex relationship. We have had both contentious periods and get-along periods in our relationship. But these days when I visit, the sight of her from the back wheeling her walker away from me, into the bedroom of her little house, her legs thin, and knock-kneed now that she has so much pain from arthritis, makes me well up with tenderness. Thanks for reminding me of that. I’d better go call her. xo
My mother lost most of her sight nine years ago. I remember the exact instant that I first saw her as frail and vulnerable. Her health has steadily deteriorated since, particularly in the last year and a half. I identify completely with your emotional reaction.
Tenderness with a child is pure. Tenderness from a lover can be, too, but it also can be manipulative. The sweet gesture, unless it’s part of a whole, is just more blah blah.
D.A., Oh I love hearing your dream space. I listen to mine.
“all the bitterness between us seemed to drift away and in its place, I felt an exchange of enormous tenderness.”
I think you got to your place of forgiveness which heals your mind as well as as your body. Interesting to note “yellow” and a door which could be an opening or closure. The color “yellow” dreamscape leaving positive as you describe and I’m reading into it is of harmony and wisdom.
Dreams have been an interest of mine! Thanks for sharing this one.
That is interesting about the color yellow, TD. But my mother’s front door actually was yellow! She also had a habit of leaving the screen door closed, and the front door halfway open, which is how it was in the dream. So actually, that would’ve indicated that she was somewhere around. (Grin)
But yes, it was a dream about her that felt, for a change, like something of a resolution. We never had that before she passed away. How long that sensation of tenderness and egalitarian acceptance will last? Who knows. But for now, it is a nice thing.
Very interesting, in life “front door halfway open” and my observation “opening or closure”! Wow, that certainly was a powerful dream.