Okay, now for another article by Danny Kaye himself that further explains what
he alluded to in the Posh article. This one I found quite touching. See what
you think. As always, please excuse any typos or misspellings... Also, there
are I think three words in this article that are italicized for emphasis. I
hope they come out as such.

Dan

------------------------------

How I Learned a Lesson in Parenthood



By Danny Kaye



Reader's Digest, September 1959 (pages 79-82)



What followed from a poignant scene in a primitive hospital in India



How many parents, I wonder, have had to learn the hard way, as I did, how
delicate the relationship is between an adult and a child, and how easy it is to
distort it?



Like so many other children, my daughter Dena is growing up in a family where
her father is frequently away from home; and, like so many fathers, I tried to
make my homecomings compensate for these separations. I'd arrive with joyous
shouts and a suitcase full of presents, sweep Dena into my arms and smother her
with plans for the next day, the next week. I'd hug her close, trying to make
up for the lost time, the missed love. But my exuberance just didn't seem to be
contagious; at each reunion she responded to me less. And I didn't know what to
do about it.



Then in the spring of 1954, when Dena was seven, I was faced with a protracted
absence from home. A U.N. official had said to me, "We're trying to help some
children grow up instead of dying at the age of eight or ten, and we'd like you
to give us a hand." He explained that an anti-TB vaccine costing only one cent
per shot could mean life to uncounted African and Asian children; that one
injection of penicillin could cure the terrible ulcers of yaws, that leprosy,
malaria, and other ancient scourges to which millions of innocent children are
heir could be defeated by modern medicine - if the world would only help.



He asked me to tour the medical and nutritional stations maintained by the
United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization, and with a
camera crew shoot a color film to be entitled "Assignment Children". It was
hoped that this film would focus public attention on the problem and elicit the
support so desperately needed. The U.N. official also thought I might be able
to entertain the children and help them overcome their fears when suddenly faced
by doctors and glittering medical paraphernalia. There was little I could say
but yes.



I delayed telling Dena as long as I could. Then suddenly at bedtime on Sunday
evening she looked me in the eyes and said solemnly, "You're going away."



"Well, ." I said. "Yes." While I stalled and searched for the best way to
breaking the news, she had seen the truth and spoken it.



"When are you going?" she asked gravely.



"Not for a whole week. And we'll have a ball during that time. A beach party
every day, if you like. How about it?"



"All right," she said, but without enthusiasm. Dena had already gone away from
me.



We opened our tour by joining a mobile U.N. vaccination unit in India, traveling
from one small village to another. The children were naturally awed and
frightened when we arrived with our needles, and my job was to win their
friendship, and confidence. For me to be introduced to them as a movie star was
obviously ridiculous. These children didn't know what a movie was. If I
exploded upon them with a big fanfare, they'd only see a big-mouthed redhead who
made a lot of noise in a foreign language and interrupted something much more
important, such as drawing a picture in the dust or thinking secret thoughts.
All children fave a great sense of privacy and you violate at your peril.



I quickly learned to move in quietly, letting them come to me. I'd wander
through a village and sit down on the ground someplace, certain that curiosity
would eventually lead the children to me. When they got close enough I'd make a
funny face at them and there'd be giggles. Soon someone would make a funny face
back and we'd have a fine contest going, with everyone laughing and relaxed.
Then I'd clap hands and start a follow-the-leader that took us down the lanes
and around the temples and pagodas, to end up before the waiting doctors. The
children submitted to the injections, comforted not by any skills of mine but
because they saw in me a reflection of themselves. Thus the adult would was
suddenly not quite so alien and overwhelming.



I remembered this lesson when I went to entertain patients in the children's
ward in Mysore Province in south-central India. It was a day when the vary land
seemed fevered. Twenty iron cots lined the walls of a stifling room, and at the
far end was an upright piano. The children paid no particular attention to me
as I walked down the aisle between the beds, nor did I to them. Standing beside
the piano and tapping the beat out lightly, I hummed a song to myself. A couple
of little boys glanced at me curiously, then turned back to the beads they were
stringing.



My accompanist whispered to me, "Danny, belt one out! Wake 'em up!"



I shook my head. "Give me 'Blue Skies', real easy."



This time I sang the lyrics instead of humming, but quietly, again as if to
myself. Several children were gravely watching me now, and by the time I had
started the third song a few of the more venturesome had climbed out of bed and
come over to the piano. When I finished the song we stared at each other for a
moment of dignified silence, then I made a face and they laughed. It was that
laughter that brought every child in the room to attention and soon into the
party. Their laughter made us friends, not mine. They came to me, and on their
own terms.



But somehow I didn't see how this lesson applied to my relationship with Dena.
Not until I witnessed little Kirim and his parents, and their ordeal in a
primitive hospital in central India. Kirim was a delicate boy of five, brought
in for surgery. He was given an anesthetic, and operated on and placed in a
small crib to regain consciousness. Throughout the entire procedure his parents
stood reassuringly close by, where, until the anesthetic took over, he could see
their calm dignity, their outward appearance of serenity.



I was nearby when Kirim finally opened his eyes after the operation. If I'd
been his father I'd probably have joked and laughed and tried to make the boy
look up at the familiar and loved faces of his father and mother, I suddenly
realized how wrong I would have been - how deep was their wisdom. They spoke
his name and touched his hand, but gave no display of their own concern and
emotion. During the following hours they talked only when Kirim wished to talk,
laughed only when he did, was silent when he was silent. They did not impose
themselves upon him, did not use his small being to ease their own anxieties.
They let him decide how much attention he needed, how much love he wanted
displayed, and when. They were a great reservoir of strength he could dip into
at will.



After my tour had covered 40,000 miles, through Burma, Thailand and Africa as
well as India, I turned at last homeward. Through my memory ran an endless
parade of little faces, black ones, brown ones, tan and yellow and golden ones.
Now I wanted only to see one small pink and white face. As I stepped from the
plane, my wife and daughter greeted me with the reserve that comes from a long
separation. I kissed them warmly - but quietly - and the three of us left the
field hand in hand. I wanted so to walk doubled over with my face thrust
against Dena's, forcing upon her my attention, my love, my accumulated sense of
loss. I wanted to hold her tight, literally to squeeze out of her the admission
that she had missed me . I wanted it all now, this instant!



But at last I knew better. She would take her own time before accepting me
again as a part of her life. Usually it required about a week, and the more I
bounded at her, I realized now, the slower it would be.



During the drive from the airport Dena's mother and I talked casually about
things that had happened at home during my absence. Intuitively my wife
understood what I was doing, and together we tried to emphasize not the
interruption in our lives but the continuity. We talked as if I had gone away
only yesterday. Dena participated in the conversation, but tentatively,
cautiously.



At home we had supper on the terrace and were sitting quietly over coffee when
Dena suddenly threw her arms in the air and cried, "How about a beach party
tomorrow?"



"Hey!" I cried in response. "How about that!"



I opened my arms to catch her as she launched herself at my neck. It had been
but three hours since my plane landed.



Since that day I have tried never to drive my daughter from me by overwhelming
her with my own moods. And I've learned that this principle doesn't just apply
to long separations. Even when I'm making pictures in Hollywood - coming home
each evening after the day's work like so many fathers - I return with some
calmness, holding my emotions in reserve to see what her needs may be. I try to
be her reservoir of strength.



Someday, when she's older, I'll tell my daughter why her father changed. Then
she will understand what we owe to Kirim and his parents.


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