The Healing Powers of Holding Your Father’s Hand

Because of the nursery rhyme "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star," my little son had taken to
calling stars “up-aboves.” It’s one of his charms to point them out on a nighttime walk, riding
on my shoulders. He believes that all people live to the age of 100, then we fly up there to
live together. Someday when I go, he says that he won’t let me go alone. He’ll jump on my
back whether I like it or not and ride up there with me.

It shouldn’t be lost on us that the innocent, authentic language of children—with which they
boldly claim their experiences of the world as their own—contains a certain magic that
reminds us of how separated we become as adults from the experience of the numinous.

Cedalion riding on the shoulders of Orion.

Source: Nicolas Poussin/Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

This is perhaps the lesson of Orion, the hunter of ancient Greek myth, who had gone too far
in his ambitions, crossed the line of respect and diplomacy with the other gods and
goddesses to have Zeus punish him by ripping out his eyes. In desperation, he approached
the blacksmith god, Hephaestus, and asked that he fashion him new eyes to replace the
lost ones.

The blacksmith was firm in denying the request—it would directly disobey Zeus, and doing
so wouldn’t work, anyway. He said that Orion was destined to walk all the way to the
furthest, eastern regions of the world where the sun god, Helios, rises every morning. This
illumination would reward his journey to change himself and his relations with others with
“new eyes.”

How was Orion to walk such an impossible distance without eyes?

Hephaestus’ solution is that he would lend Orion one of his apprentices, a young boy,
Cedalion. The boy would sit on his shoulders as he walked and could serve as his
substitute sight until he could earn back his new eyes when morning breaks.

And so they began a long pilgrimage east.

Remembering to Hold Hands With a Son

We were about to cross a busy street in Chicago when I instinctively grasped my son’s little
hand, at which he clutched mine tight. As I always do, I told him that he is my favorite
person in the whole world. As we reached the other side, his grip softened until he ripped it
away a moment later to jump to the curb.

I felt suddenly and profoundly sad, not knowing why until late that night. I thought back to
the only time I recall my father ever holding my hand. At the same age as my son, a dog bit
me. My father grasped my hand to lead me back to the dog—to find it could not hurt me
with him present. Instead, I would rip my hand away and run, the thing that incited its reflex
to bite in the first place.

He was a mathematician and airplane pilot who passed a long time ago. Decades later,
when I fly and feel the jarring sense of turbulence, I make up for all the lost opportunities to
hold my father’s hand and trust it. I close my eyes and imagine the feeling of my father’s
large hand enveloping my own, which becomes a sense of peace and calm, confident that
everything will be alright. I thank him, then we “talk,” making up for the lost time of him dying
young.

Grossman et al. (2002) show that paternal gender socialization may be disproportionately
influential to the maternal on child outcomes. Our connection to our fathers profoundly
affects how our lives will unfold.

Our special place to continue a never-ending conversation continues long after my father’s
passing. It only exists for us above 30,000 feet, where he was happiest as a pilot. It is a
feeling of saudade—both sad that we didn’t hold hands nearly enough in life, yet enjoyable
to still have a personal, tangible connection to a man who sacrificed so much of his own
welfare for my security and happiness.

Allan Briggs (2019) describes the “present father" in your life as the genesis of identity
development and the ability to learn and discover the world around us via distinctions
between the events, people, and their circumstances within it.

Allan Schore (2017) demonstrates that fathers play a fundamental role in regulating
emotion, and “rough-and-tumble” play is especially useful to boys in learning to grow into
adults who operate in the world within societal limits and under the guidance of societal
rules. The most straightforward action with which such play begins and ends is the tender,
soft moments of both initial touch and letting go that are felt in hands holding each other.

Remembering to Hold Hands With a Daughter

I would have another remembrance of a hand to hold in the form of a small picture. It is a
black-and-white print of a small girl in the wind; her hand outstretched toward a vivid-red,
heart-shaped balloon. It looked like the uncontrollable wind was taking away all the color of
life itself, leaving her and her world colorless.

I burst into tears at the sight, not knowing why until moments later what was obvious.