Healing

I went home last evening after giving a talk on open disclosure. That was a big term - open disclosure - close to naked; disclosure is in there, and appearing like a naked display. I wondered what my audience could have thought of my talk, what they could have said. But I was turning my attention to my daughter too soon to wonder long.

After dinner my wife told me a story at home.

Jasmine was crying at the top of her lungs all of a sudden in the afternoon. "What's the matter, Jasmine?" my maid asked, walking hurriedly out of the kitchen.

"I dooooon't want mom to come home," my daughter screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks. It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. My maid paused, looking at Jasmine's face and wondered. She then looked around the room, holding my daughter in her lap. Her eyes landed on one of our Charles Brown collection - with a broken neck. In a thoughtful voice my maid said: "I see. There we're. You must have worried to tell mom that you broke Charles Brown."

They talked over it for a while, and ended up putting Charles Brown under Jasmine's pillow. She herself would not have thought of this as casually metaphorical - almost like sweeping Charles Brown under the carpet. She didn't talk about Charles Brown when my wife went home. It just so happened that my wife saw Charles Brown, injured, at my daughter's bedroom. How did my wife talk to Jasmine? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do at that moment, it's a pretty safe bet that we should help a little kid heal the wound.

This is the happiest story ending I've ever heard. It's about a mother and a daughter sitting together and putting glue to Charles Brown's broken neck. After the bedtime story, my wife asked Jasmine if she would tell mom when she breaks something again.

"Yes," said Jasmine affectionately, "and good night, mom."