Men: Reflection in action

Thom Garfat

Jake is crying silently. I don’t know what to do. So I back quietly out of the waiting room hoping he didn’t notice me with his face in his hands like that. I can only hope.

Whew. That was quite a surprise! Even after all these years I am still taken aback when I see a man crying quietly. I guess I still expect men to rant and rave, storm and shout. Such a stereotype but, unfortunately, still an adequate reflection of the most common experiences I have. But enough of this. What am I going to do, now that I have a handle on my reaction? I have to go and see him. He is expecting me.

I go back in the room. Jake looks up, his eyes are still wet, and red. He’s been crying for a while, I think. He looks back down again. I have to sit down. I choose to sit beside him on the old sofa, dark brown so as not to reflect too well the stains of numerous visits and years of abuse. Now why did I decide to sit here beside him? Should I have sat across on the chair, giving him more space? I did that without thinking. Not a good thing to do sometimes. I need to be more thoughtful, more reflective. But, for the moment it seems okay. He doesn’t seem to be reacting. So I guess that it’s okay.

But what to do now? What’s next? I know Jake knows I am here. He must know I have seen that he was crying. This just isn’t what I was expecting, given our previous experiences. I mean, every time we have met, probably eight times by now, we've danced around each other in the way men so often do. we've had conversations, talking about important things, like how his son is doing here in the centre, or how things are going at home since his wife died, or what his plans are for getting his family back together. Important stuff for sure, but somehow never intimate. It’s not like we have ever talked about how he feels, or what excites him, or what makes him sad, or even if he loves his children. They were always somehow cognitive, distant-from-other, conversations. Self at an arm’s length. Just like home, growing up. Maybe that was more my influence than his. God, what if?

I guess when I was a kid I learned so much about how to be a guy “chin up, big boys don’t cry, suck it up, get over it “that it still stays with me on some level. I do like to think I am a modern man, but I guess that old Neanderthal lurks in there still. Creeping around the dark recesses waiting for moments like this when it can pop up and make it’s presence felt. I can hear Leanne now, “Certainly true. Certainly true.” But I am getting unfocussed here.

I am thinking that this is as close as I have ever felt to him. So, what’s that about? How come I feel closer? Just because he is sad and crying, hurting? Why would I feel different than last time when we met? I need to decide what to do.

I want to reach out and touch him now. I know it has only been a few seconds since I sat down but he is probably wondering what I am going to do. But should I touch him? How might he react? What do I know ... ?

I know that we have never had an intimate conversation and the only times we have ever touched is in the traditionally male handshakes we've exchanged every time we've met, and it hasn’t seemed to make a difference whether we were meeting at his home or here. It’s always the same. And I’ve watched Jake with his son, Kal, whenever they meet. They do much the same. Not a handshake maybe, but never more than one of those oh-so-male sideways hugs, or a playful punch on the arm on a good day. And I have noticed that Kal is the same way with all the other guys here. In a way it makes sense. This isn’t one of those cultures where the men touch very much “I don’t think I have ever seen two guys hug in greeting here so maybe they are just men of their culture. But then, maybe it is also just about them and the distance there is in their relationship right now. Or maybe it has always been like that. Or maybe there is something about how we are as men in this program that encourages the others to be like us. God, there is so much I don’t know.

Maybe I shouldn’t touch him. Maybe I should just say something. Maybe I should just pretend it’s all just like normal. Ignore his tears. Just ask him how things are going, ignore what might be going on for him right now. Just like I always used to do with my own dad. Heck, we never talked about feelings. Foreign territory in our family, that’s for sure. The closest we ever got to a feeling was being excited when dad got a new car, or someone caught a fish. Well, except of course, it was okay to get angry, pissed off. Hmm, interesting.

But I am a Child and Youth Care Worker now, not just my father’s son. Not just a man of my culture. Whatever I do it needs to respect that as well.

I can see us now as if from the other side of the room. Jake and I sitting on this old worn sofa, not looking at each other, two men uncomfortable in the moment. I sense the tension of restrained action, like rabbits waiting to jump. And I’d better jump before he does.

What should I do. Touch him? Speak? Do nothing? Frances Ricks, I remember, said that it is better to act and be wrong, than not to act and be irrelevant.

I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder. I really don’t have a choice. It is all I know how to do. Someone said, “If you can’t be yourself for other, you can’t be with other.”

He’s not moving. Oh, God. Have I made a mistake here?
“Talk to me, Jake–
“What’s to say?” he asks, looking over with still wet eyes. “It’s all a mess.”

–Damn,” I wonder, “what does that mean?” It’s my turn to speak again. I’m not sure what to say. I’ve never heard him sound vulnerable before. We seem to have got through the touch. What’s next? “Tell me about it, Jake” I say.

I’m older now. I think back on this moment as if it were yesterday and I guess in some ways it was. Time is like that, somehow, everything separated by days and weeks and years yet woven into the immediate moment. I can still see Jake and me sitting in that little green waiting room, scared together on the old worn sofa, each waiting and wondering. Each ready to jump like startled rabbits. The image, like the experience, is still fresh.

That happens sometimes. I reflect back on a moment and I am once again, for this moment, in that other moment. The past becomes the present and informs the future.

Donald Schoen said that it is wise to reflect on action as it is occurring in the moment; to wonder what aspects of knowledge and experience might inform the moment so that we might act in a most thoughtful way. I believed it then. I believe it now. Too much action happens, it seems to me, without reflection.

I know that this kind of reflection appears to demand a lot. But then, to be simplistic, didn’t it also seem complicated to turn left on a bicycle when you first started? And now that I think about it, reflecting back, as it were, I was sure excited and proud of myself when I made that first left hand turn. But I didn’t let them see it.

This feature: Garfat, T. (2005). Men: Reflection in action. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice, 18, 2. pp.79-80.