The Power of Words & Love
Nov. 4th, 2014 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names.
As names have power, words have power.
Words can light fires in the minds of men.
Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“The power of love is a curious thing.
Makes one man weep, makes another man sing.
Changes a hawk to a little white dove.
More than a feeling, that’s the power of love.
Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream,
Stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream.
Makes a bad one good, makes a wrong one right,
The power of love keeps you home at night.
(Power of Love: Huey Lewis – 1985)
It started out as just another Saturday afternoon at my grandparent’s house on Workman Street. There was no big family occasion or celebration planned for that day. If anything, it was remarkably quiet. All of my uncles were gone, having taken the big truck to help the family of a friend move into a new house, and my aunts were busily engaged choosing their dresses and makeup, and getting ready for some big adult party or dance later that night. There had been no planning in this trip to our abuelos’ house. My Dad had simply announced that we were going to his parents’ home, and he plopped all 5 of us, my Mom, the twins, Arthur and Stela, and the baby, Gracie, into the car and drove to Lincoln Heights. We would make a day of it as we went along. My mother’s contribution to the trip came when we were about a mile or two from our destination. As she always did when we visited my grandparents, she asked my father to stop the car for a minute so she could address the children. Holding 5 year-old Gracie in her lap, she turned her head to speak to the 3 older children seated in the back seat.
“Ahora, para revisar…” she said, speaking in Spanish:
“Now then, let’s review. The first things you do when we arrive are to saludar, or greet, your grandparents right away, and then your aunts, uncles, and cousins. Always remember that your actions reflect your family and me – so behave and be courteous. If anyone asks how we are, or how we’re doing, you simply tell them: ‘Bien gracias’, and no more. Ustedes son niños bien educados (You are well-educated children) so make sure your words and actions reflect the way I brought you up”.
I’ve taken some liberties with my mother’s usual preamble to a visit, but you get the picture. She was bringing her family of four children into her in-law’s home, and she did not want us embarrassing or shaming her parenting skills. Being “bien educados” was paramount in my mother’s code of conduct, and we needed to mind our words and actions. Strangely, now that I think back upon those scenes, my father never said a word. I don’t know if he ever rolled his eyes, pursed his lips, or frowned during my mother’s monologues on etiquette and manners. All I remember is that he always called my mother his “princess”, and treated her with loving kindness and patience.
Unfortunately for my mom, her stern warnings had become somewhat routine and commonplace by age 9 or 10, and I no longer took them very seriously. I assumed I was a “niño, bien educado”, and my actions would take care of themselves. After formally greeting our abuelos, tias, and primos, in their chronological or hierarchal order, I immediately set off searching for my Uncle Charlie. Only 5 years older than me, Charlie was like my older brother. I idolized him and imitated all of his interests and activities. When we visited his home, he always kept me thoroughly engaged with his fertile imagination for games, his vast cache of comic books, or involved in the current sport he was playing. Sadly, he was gone that day, having accompanied his older brothers, Kado, Tarsi, and Henry in their furniture moving operation. Left to my own devices, I first tried separating myself from my younger brother Arthur so I could explore the massive, ramshackle house that was my grandfather’s domain on my own. I had explored my grandfather’s house alone on other occasions. His home was a treasure trove of hidden, stored, and sometimes visible artifacts, tools, and curiosities. However, while I had achieved a certain level of stealthiness in these explorations, my brother Arthur had not. It never seemed to occur to him that we were doing something wrong as I searched through drawers, cupboards, and cabinets. So Arthur, who we nicknamed Tito, tended to be nosier and clumsier during his searches.
On this particular Saturday, in the absence of an older playmate and guide, I decided to find something to eat, and went searching for a snack in my abuelita’s pantry. This was a walk-in storeroom next to the kitchen, which was lined with countless shelves, stacked with canned goods, jars of condiments and food, and boxes and wrapped packages of bread, cookies, and sometimes candy. Children were strictly forbidden from this domain, unless accompanied by an adult. Wisely, I had often volunteered to accompany and help my Aunt Lisa when she was given the task of storing food and groceries after a shopping trip, so I knew where the cookies and crackers were located. However, I had never entered the pantry on my own, nor had I ever secretly absconded with food before. The tension and excitement of performing a forbidden act was actually more compelling than my hunger. I was more bored than hungry, and I convinced myself that taking some cookies or crackers was no big deal. What I didn’t count on was Arthur’s loud exclamations of wonder and excitement at being inside a forbidden chamber, and seeing so much food and produce in one place.
“Look at this,” he exclaimed loudly, “Ritz Crackers, and Oreos!”
My panicked shushes only animated him further, and to make matters worse he started reaching up and touching boxes of cereal, and moving aside cans of fruit and soup. To reach the higher levels, he began stepping up on the lower shelves and stretching out his arm and hand to inspect the jars and bottles stored there. There was one particularly big glass jar of frijoles (pinto beans, to be exact) at the edge of the uppermost shelf. I saw the danger before he did and shouted, “Watch out, Tito!”
Too late – his hand brushed the jar sideways and sent it rolling off the edge. Eyes wide, and pupils dilating in panic, I watched the massive jar float downward, as if in slow-motion, shattering on the hard linoleum floor, and sending wave after wave of beans bounding and careening across the room. Somehow I managed to shake off my paralysis and verbalized the one word that always leapt to my lips when faced with the awful calamity of my own making: “Run!”
Ignoring the dangerous mess of beans and broken glass we had created, we scurried out the pantry door, running right past my Aunt Helen. I led the way, with Arthur following in my wake, streaking through the kitchen, out the door and into the den, living room, and hallway entrance, not stopping until we reached the safety and open air of the front porch. I knew I was in trouble, and immediately started thinking of ways to shift the burden of guilt onto Arthur. After all, he had ignored my warnings to be quiet and still, he had reached up too high for the box of crackers, and he had knocked the frijoles off the shelf. I had simply watched him do it. I was truly an innocent bystander, I concluded. But before I could plan my defense further, Helen arrived.
“Toñito!” came the screeching call from the interior of the house. “Ven aqui”, Helen commanded, angrily, bursting through the hallway and bounding out the front door. “Come here, right now! Don’t you dare run away from me, “ she warned, watching me give the street a longing look, as if considering further flight.
I had never seen Helen so angry. Her faced was flushed and her voice was strained and strident. I avoided Helen whenever possible. She seemed the most mature and aloof of my aunts, and never wanted to be bothered with children or infants. If she babysat us, the evening became a boring monotomy of watching TV silently, not bothering her, and going to bed early, so she could make phone calls to girl friends and suitors. I stayed out of her way as much as possible and was careful not to upset her. This was the first time I felt the fury of her unleashed anger – and her voice paralyzed me, so all I could do was turn and face her.
“Antonio Alberto”, she accused, calling me by my full name. “I saw you in the kitchen. You were stealing food and you made a mess of the cocina. I’m going to make sure that you get spanked to within an inch of your life, and that you can’t sit down for a week. I always suspected you as a troublemaker and a thief. Everybody thinks you’re such an angel, but I knew you were a travieso sin vergüenza. Wait ‘til I tell your mother what you did.”
That’s when I lost it. Until she mentioned my mother I had been anxiously waiting for a chance to interrupt and tell my side of the story. But Helen wasn’t investigating – she had seen us fleeing the scene of the crime, and I was the eldest brother, the first-born grandson of the family. The burden of responsibility and guilt fell on me. But now, Helen was going too far. She was blaming me for past sins and offenses, and calling me a “travieso sin vergüenza”, a shameless troublemaker. But worst of all, she was threatening to tell my mother and embarrass her before the entire family. I felt my face flush and glow with impotent rage, and my breath quickened. Somehow I needed to stop this endless, emotional tirade, and shut Helen up.
Miraculously, an image popped into my head. A scene from a schoolyard incident I had witnessed some weeks before. A scrawny, smart-alecky 6th grader had befuddled a much bigger and stronger 8th grader with just one phrase. Two words, and the burly 8th grader, who had been threatening the smaller boy, froze with shock and impotent rage. I had puzzled over that scene, and repeated the two words to myself many times, never knowing what they meant or why they held such raw power. All I knew for sure was that their use was able to freeze a critical moment, and instantly reverse the roles of victim and aggressor, accused and accuser. I framed those two words in my mind and on my lips, and looking up at Helen’s grotesquely distorted face, while clinching my fists at my side, I insanely shouted, as loudly as I could:
“FUCK YOU!”
I first heard that new, powerful word in school, in a phrase that didn’t really make sense at the time. By the 3rd or 4th grade, I knew the context and culture of schools, especially the Catholic school we attended in the Silver Lake District of Los Angeles. I was also familiar with, and able to joke, tease, lie, and provoke desired responses in English and in Spanish. But those linguistic skills involved a certain degree of storytelling. Sure, I could makeup silly, repetitious onomatopoeic words to annoy and anger my younger siblings, but never just ONE WORD. Rarely did one word provoke such a visceral response as I witnessed on the schoolyard that day. What I heard was one word, used in a simple, declarative sentence that was DIFFERENT. By this time I had witnessed my share of arguments and fights between boys on secluded parts of the schoolyard. I had also been challenged, bullied, and provoked to fight bigger, older, and seemingly more aggressive boys. But I had never heard one word used like that, nor witnessed the resulting shock, surprise, and role-reversal.
“How could ONE word do that?” I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure of the answer, but I remember practicing that word with my friend Joey. I’d come to the conclusion that regardless of my ignorance of its exact meaning, I needed to have such a weapon in my arsenal of verbal armaments.
I remember that moment on the porch with Helen with such crystal clarity that it could have happened yesterday. I can taste the coppery sensation of fear in my mouth, and the ball of anger and resentment hardening in my stomach. I barked out one unfamiliar sound, and pronounced a new and strange word that I did not understand – and for a moment the earth’s rotation stopped.
Helen froze in instant paralysis, her eyes bulging out in shock and horror, and the color draining from her normally smooth bronze skin. Her mouth hung open for what seemed an hour.
“I… I…I,” she gasped, as if gulping for breath after a light year of suspended animation.
“I’m going to tell your father!” She finally proclaimed, as if tolling a death knell, and she turned and stormed off into the house.
“What did you say?” Arthur whispered in shocked awe.
“I, I, I don’t know,” I replied in wonder at what had occurred. “But I think it was BAD”.
My father was never angry or upset when he disciplined us, and the one time he spanked me (I later learned) was at my mother’s insistence. Disciplining with Dad was a Socratic dialogue – he asking the questions and making the clarifications, and I forming conclusions about my actions and behavior. When he appeared on the porch, with Helen and my aunts in tow, peeking over his shoulders and waiting to see how I would be punished, he simply asked for privacy and walked me to a corner of the porch where we could be alone. There he calmly and quietly asked me a series of questions:
“Where did you learn that word? Do you know what it means? Why did you say it to Helen?”
I recounted the whole story: my encounter with the boys on the school yard, my puzzling over and practicing the words with Joey, and my anger over being backed into a corner and accused of things I didn’t do by Helen. When I finished the narrative, he nodded his head and admitted, “Yeah, sometimes Helen can get a little carried away. But she had a right to be angry over what happened in the pantry. You had no excuse for using those words. They were rude, vulgar, and insulting to her.”
“But Dad, what does it mean?” I implored, still not seeing the connection. “I just know that it makes people shut up. I just wanted Helen to stop shouting at me.”
“Mi hijo”, he explained, “the meaning of the word isn’t as important as the feelings of anger, hate, and violence behind it. The word ‘fuck’ means ‘sexual intercourse’. It is the sexual act between a man and a woman. That’s all it means. But some people use it to show their anger and hate. It’s like calling a Mexican a ‘beaner’, ‘spic’, or ‘wetback’, or calling a Negro a ‘nigger’. It’s an insult, a put-down, a ‘groceria’, and intelligent and thoughtful people don’t say it. Helen was hurt and offended when you said it to her. You made her feel cheap and dirty”.
“I’m sorry Dad,” I mumbled, shamefaced. “I didn’t know”.
“I know you didn’t, mi hijo”, he said, patting my head. “So what do you think you should do now?”
“I guess I need to apologize to Helen and tell her I’m sorry”.
“That’s a good start,” he added. “What else can you do?”
“Well, I can clean up the mess I made and promise to stay out of the pantry.”
“I think those are good ideas,” he concluded, and then mercifully added, “and I’ll explain what happened to your mother.”
As names have power, words have power.
Words can light fires in the minds of men.
Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“The power of love is a curious thing.
Makes one man weep, makes another man sing.
Changes a hawk to a little white dove.
More than a feeling, that’s the power of love.
Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream,
Stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream.
Makes a bad one good, makes a wrong one right,
The power of love keeps you home at night.
(Power of Love: Huey Lewis – 1985)
It started out as just another Saturday afternoon at my grandparent’s house on Workman Street. There was no big family occasion or celebration planned for that day. If anything, it was remarkably quiet. All of my uncles were gone, having taken the big truck to help the family of a friend move into a new house, and my aunts were busily engaged choosing their dresses and makeup, and getting ready for some big adult party or dance later that night. There had been no planning in this trip to our abuelos’ house. My Dad had simply announced that we were going to his parents’ home, and he plopped all 5 of us, my Mom, the twins, Arthur and Stela, and the baby, Gracie, into the car and drove to Lincoln Heights. We would make a day of it as we went along. My mother’s contribution to the trip came when we were about a mile or two from our destination. As she always did when we visited my grandparents, she asked my father to stop the car for a minute so she could address the children. Holding 5 year-old Gracie in her lap, she turned her head to speak to the 3 older children seated in the back seat.
“Ahora, para revisar…” she said, speaking in Spanish:
“Now then, let’s review. The first things you do when we arrive are to saludar, or greet, your grandparents right away, and then your aunts, uncles, and cousins. Always remember that your actions reflect your family and me – so behave and be courteous. If anyone asks how we are, or how we’re doing, you simply tell them: ‘Bien gracias’, and no more. Ustedes son niños bien educados (You are well-educated children) so make sure your words and actions reflect the way I brought you up”.
I’ve taken some liberties with my mother’s usual preamble to a visit, but you get the picture. She was bringing her family of four children into her in-law’s home, and she did not want us embarrassing or shaming her parenting skills. Being “bien educados” was paramount in my mother’s code of conduct, and we needed to mind our words and actions. Strangely, now that I think back upon those scenes, my father never said a word. I don’t know if he ever rolled his eyes, pursed his lips, or frowned during my mother’s monologues on etiquette and manners. All I remember is that he always called my mother his “princess”, and treated her with loving kindness and patience.
Unfortunately for my mom, her stern warnings had become somewhat routine and commonplace by age 9 or 10, and I no longer took them very seriously. I assumed I was a “niño, bien educado”, and my actions would take care of themselves. After formally greeting our abuelos, tias, and primos, in their chronological or hierarchal order, I immediately set off searching for my Uncle Charlie. Only 5 years older than me, Charlie was like my older brother. I idolized him and imitated all of his interests and activities. When we visited his home, he always kept me thoroughly engaged with his fertile imagination for games, his vast cache of comic books, or involved in the current sport he was playing. Sadly, he was gone that day, having accompanied his older brothers, Kado, Tarsi, and Henry in their furniture moving operation. Left to my own devices, I first tried separating myself from my younger brother Arthur so I could explore the massive, ramshackle house that was my grandfather’s domain on my own. I had explored my grandfather’s house alone on other occasions. His home was a treasure trove of hidden, stored, and sometimes visible artifacts, tools, and curiosities. However, while I had achieved a certain level of stealthiness in these explorations, my brother Arthur had not. It never seemed to occur to him that we were doing something wrong as I searched through drawers, cupboards, and cabinets. So Arthur, who we nicknamed Tito, tended to be nosier and clumsier during his searches.
On this particular Saturday, in the absence of an older playmate and guide, I decided to find something to eat, and went searching for a snack in my abuelita’s pantry. This was a walk-in storeroom next to the kitchen, which was lined with countless shelves, stacked with canned goods, jars of condiments and food, and boxes and wrapped packages of bread, cookies, and sometimes candy. Children were strictly forbidden from this domain, unless accompanied by an adult. Wisely, I had often volunteered to accompany and help my Aunt Lisa when she was given the task of storing food and groceries after a shopping trip, so I knew where the cookies and crackers were located. However, I had never entered the pantry on my own, nor had I ever secretly absconded with food before. The tension and excitement of performing a forbidden act was actually more compelling than my hunger. I was more bored than hungry, and I convinced myself that taking some cookies or crackers was no big deal. What I didn’t count on was Arthur’s loud exclamations of wonder and excitement at being inside a forbidden chamber, and seeing so much food and produce in one place.
“Look at this,” he exclaimed loudly, “Ritz Crackers, and Oreos!”
My panicked shushes only animated him further, and to make matters worse he started reaching up and touching boxes of cereal, and moving aside cans of fruit and soup. To reach the higher levels, he began stepping up on the lower shelves and stretching out his arm and hand to inspect the jars and bottles stored there. There was one particularly big glass jar of frijoles (pinto beans, to be exact) at the edge of the uppermost shelf. I saw the danger before he did and shouted, “Watch out, Tito!”
Too late – his hand brushed the jar sideways and sent it rolling off the edge. Eyes wide, and pupils dilating in panic, I watched the massive jar float downward, as if in slow-motion, shattering on the hard linoleum floor, and sending wave after wave of beans bounding and careening across the room. Somehow I managed to shake off my paralysis and verbalized the one word that always leapt to my lips when faced with the awful calamity of my own making: “Run!”
Ignoring the dangerous mess of beans and broken glass we had created, we scurried out the pantry door, running right past my Aunt Helen. I led the way, with Arthur following in my wake, streaking through the kitchen, out the door and into the den, living room, and hallway entrance, not stopping until we reached the safety and open air of the front porch. I knew I was in trouble, and immediately started thinking of ways to shift the burden of guilt onto Arthur. After all, he had ignored my warnings to be quiet and still, he had reached up too high for the box of crackers, and he had knocked the frijoles off the shelf. I had simply watched him do it. I was truly an innocent bystander, I concluded. But before I could plan my defense further, Helen arrived.
“Toñito!” came the screeching call from the interior of the house. “Ven aqui”, Helen commanded, angrily, bursting through the hallway and bounding out the front door. “Come here, right now! Don’t you dare run away from me, “ she warned, watching me give the street a longing look, as if considering further flight.
I had never seen Helen so angry. Her faced was flushed and her voice was strained and strident. I avoided Helen whenever possible. She seemed the most mature and aloof of my aunts, and never wanted to be bothered with children or infants. If she babysat us, the evening became a boring monotomy of watching TV silently, not bothering her, and going to bed early, so she could make phone calls to girl friends and suitors. I stayed out of her way as much as possible and was careful not to upset her. This was the first time I felt the fury of her unleashed anger – and her voice paralyzed me, so all I could do was turn and face her.
“Antonio Alberto”, she accused, calling me by my full name. “I saw you in the kitchen. You were stealing food and you made a mess of the cocina. I’m going to make sure that you get spanked to within an inch of your life, and that you can’t sit down for a week. I always suspected you as a troublemaker and a thief. Everybody thinks you’re such an angel, but I knew you were a travieso sin vergüenza. Wait ‘til I tell your mother what you did.”
That’s when I lost it. Until she mentioned my mother I had been anxiously waiting for a chance to interrupt and tell my side of the story. But Helen wasn’t investigating – she had seen us fleeing the scene of the crime, and I was the eldest brother, the first-born grandson of the family. The burden of responsibility and guilt fell on me. But now, Helen was going too far. She was blaming me for past sins and offenses, and calling me a “travieso sin vergüenza”, a shameless troublemaker. But worst of all, she was threatening to tell my mother and embarrass her before the entire family. I felt my face flush and glow with impotent rage, and my breath quickened. Somehow I needed to stop this endless, emotional tirade, and shut Helen up.
Miraculously, an image popped into my head. A scene from a schoolyard incident I had witnessed some weeks before. A scrawny, smart-alecky 6th grader had befuddled a much bigger and stronger 8th grader with just one phrase. Two words, and the burly 8th grader, who had been threatening the smaller boy, froze with shock and impotent rage. I had puzzled over that scene, and repeated the two words to myself many times, never knowing what they meant or why they held such raw power. All I knew for sure was that their use was able to freeze a critical moment, and instantly reverse the roles of victim and aggressor, accused and accuser. I framed those two words in my mind and on my lips, and looking up at Helen’s grotesquely distorted face, while clinching my fists at my side, I insanely shouted, as loudly as I could:
“FUCK YOU!”
I first heard that new, powerful word in school, in a phrase that didn’t really make sense at the time. By the 3rd or 4th grade, I knew the context and culture of schools, especially the Catholic school we attended in the Silver Lake District of Los Angeles. I was also familiar with, and able to joke, tease, lie, and provoke desired responses in English and in Spanish. But those linguistic skills involved a certain degree of storytelling. Sure, I could makeup silly, repetitious onomatopoeic words to annoy and anger my younger siblings, but never just ONE WORD. Rarely did one word provoke such a visceral response as I witnessed on the schoolyard that day. What I heard was one word, used in a simple, declarative sentence that was DIFFERENT. By this time I had witnessed my share of arguments and fights between boys on secluded parts of the schoolyard. I had also been challenged, bullied, and provoked to fight bigger, older, and seemingly more aggressive boys. But I had never heard one word used like that, nor witnessed the resulting shock, surprise, and role-reversal.
“How could ONE word do that?” I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure of the answer, but I remember practicing that word with my friend Joey. I’d come to the conclusion that regardless of my ignorance of its exact meaning, I needed to have such a weapon in my arsenal of verbal armaments.
I remember that moment on the porch with Helen with such crystal clarity that it could have happened yesterday. I can taste the coppery sensation of fear in my mouth, and the ball of anger and resentment hardening in my stomach. I barked out one unfamiliar sound, and pronounced a new and strange word that I did not understand – and for a moment the earth’s rotation stopped.
Helen froze in instant paralysis, her eyes bulging out in shock and horror, and the color draining from her normally smooth bronze skin. Her mouth hung open for what seemed an hour.
“I… I…I,” she gasped, as if gulping for breath after a light year of suspended animation.
“I’m going to tell your father!” She finally proclaimed, as if tolling a death knell, and she turned and stormed off into the house.
“What did you say?” Arthur whispered in shocked awe.
“I, I, I don’t know,” I replied in wonder at what had occurred. “But I think it was BAD”.
**********
Why has this scene and that memory never faded, changed, or dissipated with time? The incident sticks in my head, like old keys in the drawer of my bedside table. I open that drawer every day and see those same old, familiar keys, but I can never remember what they unlock. I started this essay last September, and then I walked away. I had momentarily forgotten my purpose for writing it.
I first started thinking about the power of words, during the homeward leg of my stroller walk with my 6 month-old granddaughter, Scout (Grace Harper). She was fast asleep by that time, still grasping the thin, linen sheet I used to cover her bare legs from the sun. I was marveling at her rapid growth and development since her birth in March. On those weekly walks along Gardena Blvd, she would gaze intently at the colors, objects, and buildings that we passed, and her head would turn to investigate every new sound. She was also verbalizing all the time, going off on long sonorous riffs, while grasping and manipulating toys and rubbing them against her itching gums. I think it was while musing about these pre-language, vocal exercises, that I thought again of my memory with Helen, and the power inherent in words. I think the reason I floundered with this essay was that I was trying to make too much out of one childhood experience. I was trying to find an elegant link to language development, and discovering the gestalt moment when the power of words became manifest to me. What actually happened was something much more simple: a memory of a loving father who taught me about the use of words.
Why has this scene and that memory never faded, changed, or dissipated with time? The incident sticks in my head, like old keys in the drawer of my bedside table. I open that drawer every day and see those same old, familiar keys, but I can never remember what they unlock. I started this essay last September, and then I walked away. I had momentarily forgotten my purpose for writing it.
I first started thinking about the power of words, during the homeward leg of my stroller walk with my 6 month-old granddaughter, Scout (Grace Harper). She was fast asleep by that time, still grasping the thin, linen sheet I used to cover her bare legs from the sun. I was marveling at her rapid growth and development since her birth in March. On those weekly walks along Gardena Blvd, she would gaze intently at the colors, objects, and buildings that we passed, and her head would turn to investigate every new sound. She was also verbalizing all the time, going off on long sonorous riffs, while grasping and manipulating toys and rubbing them against her itching gums. I think it was while musing about these pre-language, vocal exercises, that I thought again of my memory with Helen, and the power inherent in words. I think the reason I floundered with this essay was that I was trying to make too much out of one childhood experience. I was trying to find an elegant link to language development, and discovering the gestalt moment when the power of words became manifest to me. What actually happened was something much more simple: a memory of a loving father who taught me about the use of words.
My father was never angry or upset when he disciplined us, and the one time he spanked me (I later learned) was at my mother’s insistence. Disciplining with Dad was a Socratic dialogue – he asking the questions and making the clarifications, and I forming conclusions about my actions and behavior. When he appeared on the porch, with Helen and my aunts in tow, peeking over his shoulders and waiting to see how I would be punished, he simply asked for privacy and walked me to a corner of the porch where we could be alone. There he calmly and quietly asked me a series of questions:
“Where did you learn that word? Do you know what it means? Why did you say it to Helen?”
I recounted the whole story: my encounter with the boys on the school yard, my puzzling over and practicing the words with Joey, and my anger over being backed into a corner and accused of things I didn’t do by Helen. When I finished the narrative, he nodded his head and admitted, “Yeah, sometimes Helen can get a little carried away. But she had a right to be angry over what happened in the pantry. You had no excuse for using those words. They were rude, vulgar, and insulting to her.”
“But Dad, what does it mean?” I implored, still not seeing the connection. “I just know that it makes people shut up. I just wanted Helen to stop shouting at me.”
“Mi hijo”, he explained, “the meaning of the word isn’t as important as the feelings of anger, hate, and violence behind it. The word ‘fuck’ means ‘sexual intercourse’. It is the sexual act between a man and a woman. That’s all it means. But some people use it to show their anger and hate. It’s like calling a Mexican a ‘beaner’, ‘spic’, or ‘wetback’, or calling a Negro a ‘nigger’. It’s an insult, a put-down, a ‘groceria’, and intelligent and thoughtful people don’t say it. Helen was hurt and offended when you said it to her. You made her feel cheap and dirty”.
“I’m sorry Dad,” I mumbled, shamefaced. “I didn’t know”.
“I know you didn’t, mi hijo”, he said, patting my head. “So what do you think you should do now?”
“I guess I need to apologize to Helen and tell her I’m sorry”.
“That’s a good start,” he added. “What else can you do?”
“Well, I can clean up the mess I made and promise to stay out of the pantry.”
“I think those are good ideas,” he concluded, and then mercifully added, “and I’ll explain what happened to your mother.”
