Unexpected Tenderness

From Menletter August 2009

By Tim Baehr

When I was about seventeen, my dad asked me to clean out the gutters around a patch of one-story roof above our den. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I happily dug out the goop, my bare back exposed to the sky.

A day later, as the sunburn (I don't remember blistering) began to heal, my entire back was prickling as if someone had rubbed itching powder into it. The discomfort was excruciating.

For some reason, my dad and I were home alone. I went to him and started to complain, loudly. The pain, and the self-centered, somewhat spoiled, entitlement of teenhood, made me ungracious and demanding: You've got to DO something!

I'm sure my dad was not all that sophisticated about treating sunburn, and 48 years ago people didn't have a lot of the skin-care products we have today. So he had me lie down, shirtless, and he sprinkled and spread talcum powder on my back. I wouldn't recommend talcum powder for sunburn, and I've never heard of it being used for sunburn.

But somehow my itching was soothed. I had from my dad a half hour of hands-on contact - probably the longest physical contact we ever had. I don't know what he was thinking or how he was experiencing it, but I remember the gentleness of his touch as if it were yesterday.