Coming to Terms With Daddy
And Are Very Ordinary (Middling) Fathers the Best Kind
Originally Posted at “Old Ones Dream” in June 2022, and updated here.
I feel certain that some readers of my recently published collection “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” were surprised that I wrote of my father as I did. Among those surprised could be some that knew him as I did, others that knew him under different circumstances, and some that didn’t know him.
My surprise is, that, in the several months since publication, no one—my siblings included—has discussed with me my relationship with “Thomas,” and how I came to write about it. I hope that means that they read the book through, and saw me seem to reconcile—to come to terms—with my dominant, detached, parent.
As we each made our way through the past “Father’s Day,” we saw tributes in the media, social and mass, to Fathers past and present.
“I feel lucky not to have a father so wonderful that I feel I could never live up to his example or so terrible that he haunts me. Maybe it’s easier to become yourself in reaction to someone who’s neither evil nor saintly. Might the middling fathers be, in a practical sense, the best ones?” - Ada Calhoun