Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that if the book of fathers is ever written, its title should be something like “Flying on Empty” or maybe “Brain Surgery Using Chopsticks,” pointing to the verity that no father in history has ever had a complete grasp of just what he is doing, and if he claims that it is otherwise, he is faking it.
The keeper is a case in point, and he looks back on his father role as comparable to riding an avalanche–a tumbling, unpredictable thing, accompanied by alternating shouts of alarm and joy; and having tumbled down the steepest part of Life’s fatherhood mountain, is now rumbling toward a valley of bright memories, all subject to family revisionism.
The keeper and Phyllis remember their own flawed fathers, with fondness, of course: Phyllis with her father’s singing “Red River Valley;” and the keeper with his father commenting that he had to get so old before realizing the joy of simply sitting on a chair in the middle of his garden.
Dads trade a moment of biological drive for a lifetime of love, responsibility, and chaos; and none of them would have it otherwise. So maybe the “Dad” book title should be, “The Incidental Hero,” or “War and Peace—on the domestic level.”
Happy Father’s Day!
