… “Paternal” is the name for the way a father feels towards his son
“Maternal”: a mother
what is the way a child feels towards his father?
i asked a massage client i was working on a few days ago
a Leo
nice thick grey chest hair
nice chest
a joy to touch in so many ways
and i asked him
because
whatever it was
i was feeling it towards him
he paused only a moment and said
“Loved”
which hit me at an odd angle
and i collapsed onto him and just lay there for a while
feeling.
— i’ve never felt loved by my father.
but as i worked on this client
i felt some of the healing that i need
and said to him, as we talked about sexual types,
“it’s clear to me now that i do have this daddy type for a reason
— i’m trying to heal my childhood.
i cannot stop having a type until i’m finished
and then i hope to be able to love everyone beyond my own needs…”
i asked a few other people
stopping with Nayland, the great encyclopedia
“Filial” of course
oh yes
are filial duties
i’m familiar with that
but only begrudgingly
love has to go both ways
i certainly hope it does some day.
0 thoughts on “what is the word for . . .”
uneasytruce
Well, of course Nayland is correct. The word ‘filial’ is from the same language, and wavelength as ‘maternal,’ ‘paternal,’ ‘fraternal.’ It’s where one of my favorite phrases, ‘filial devotion’ comes from–and I used to show that spirit to my nonparent elders very frequently, when I lived in San Francisco.
The older my parents get–and now I only have one–the more I think the feeling I’m developing for my own mother is ‘paternal;’ at some point, we children become the adults.
But when I think about my feelings toward my father, these words are also apt:
‘wide-eyed’
‘unrequited’
‘friendship’
…but there is no real translation for what we feel as gay boys, toward our disappointed fathers. They just don’t want to know as much about us, as we learned about them.