Today I have not felt my best.
A headache interrupted my entire day. It wasn’t the kind that asks for permission. It simply arrives, settles behind my eyes, and everything else has to wait. By late afternoon the ache had finally loosened its grip, but my body still felt drained. I found myself sitting quietly with a bowl of sliced watermelon. The sweetness felt refreshing against my tongue. I sighed out loud, “God…I’m so fragile.”
The moment the words left my mouth, I wasn’t sitting at my table anymore.
I was a little girl telling my dad, “My head hurts.”
My bonus mom once told me my dad was always the most concerned about me out of all four of us girls. Not because I was sick more often, but because of how I loved. She said he would look at me and say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She’s so sensitive.”
Then he’d shake his head almost as if he were talking to himself.
“She’s so sweet.”
Those words mean something different to me now than they did then.
To everyone else my father was this big, assertive man. His “Hey!” could shake the walls. His presence filled every room before he even walked into it. But somehow my softness quieted him. My sensitivity introduced me to a version of my father many people never knew existed.
He never raised that booming voice at me.
He’d simply look at my face and somehow know.
“Come here.”
I remember lying down while 101 Eastbound by Fourplay echoed softly through the room. The piano floated through the air as incense burned nearby, the fragrance wrapping itself around me until even the room seemed to exhale.
Then my dad’s hands.
To this day, when I smell eucalyptus, I don’t think of essential oils. I think of him.
His fingertips, lavished with eucalyptus oil, would begin beneath my chin, moving slowly in rhythm with the piano. Across my jawbone. Around my lips. Over my cheeks. Gently across my closed eyes. The bridge of my nose. My temples. My forehead. The crown of my head. Then the back of my head where his fingers lingered just long enough for me to feel the tension begin to surrender.
Not once did I feel rushed.
Not once did I feel like my headache had become everyone else’s problem.
If anything, my interruption became an invitation for tenderness.
Then came the ear candles.
I honestly thought my daddy had lost his mind.
My head already hurts, and you’re about to put fire next to my ear?
But I trusted him.
Afterward he’d hand me a glass of water and wait until I finished it. Then he’d lay a cool towel across my face. I can still remember the relief of that first cool touch against warm skin.
Then he’d ask for my hand.
He’d massage each finger, applying pressure down the center until he reached the palm of my hand. I never understood why he did it. I just knew it felt comforting. Years later I watched my bonus mom doing the same thing to him while he had a headache.
I asked her, “If Daddy’s head hurts, why are you rubbing his hands?”
She smiled.
“The hands have pressure points that connect to the head.”
I remember looking at her in complete shock.
So every finger he massaged…
Every place he pressed…
Every movement of his hands…
He knew exactly what he was doing.
By the time he reached my second hand, I was asleep.
When I’d wake, my headache would be gone. The air always felt crisp afterward, almost as if the whole house had rested with me. I’d smell dinner coming from the kitchen before I even opened my eyes. My dad would already be cooking while my bonus mom peeked into my room asking how I felt.
Then she’d remind me to soak in Epsom salt.
She’d run crystals over my head, guide me through breathing exercises, anoint me with oil, and remind me how wonderful I was.
By the time I finished my bath, there was peppermint tea waiting for me.
Looking back, I realize something I couldn’t have understood as a child.
My dad never treated my headache like an inconvenience.
He never told me to go take medicine and sleep it off.
Instead he’d ask me, “Where’s my headache?”
Not, “Where’s your headache.”
“My headache.”
He’d ask how much water I’d been drinking. When was the last time I exercised? What had I been thinking about before my head started hurting?
He wasn’t just trying to get rid of the pain.
He was trying to understand me.
Maybe that’s why, when I whispered today, “God, I’m so fragile,” I didn’t hear it as criticism.
I heard my father’s voice.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with her.”
“She’s so sensitive.”
“She’s so sweet.”
As a little girl, I thought those words meant he worried about me.
As a woman, I think they meant he treasured me.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never been able to see my sensitivity as something that needed fixing.
My father never treated it like a flaw.
He treated it like something precious enough to protect.
Sometimes I wonder if God made me this way on purpose.
Not only so my father could teach me gentleness, but so I could teach him gentleness too.
Maybe my fragility wasn’t an accident.
Maybe it was God’s way of softening a strong man while teaching a little girl that needing care never made her a burden.
It made her precious.
And perhaps learning to love myself has simply been remembering the way my father loved me whenever life interrupted with something as small as a headache.
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