Tag: #Daughters

  • Short Story Review: “The Other Party” by Matthew Klam

    (The short story “The Other Party” by Matthew Klam appeared in the December 19th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Do I still need to say, SPOILERS?)

    Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New Yorker

    About a month into the Covid lockdowns, so this was late April 2020, on a Zoom chat with friends, someone asked the question of how Covid will be depicted in movies, tv shows, novels, and so forth. Would there be stories about anxiety, existential doom and gloom, or would some media just act like Covid never existed? It was a lively topic for discussion, and with two plus years on now, more and more stories are beginning to show up, and try to deal with what Covid has meant. It is my belief that “The Other Party” by Matthew Klam sprang from such a thought as well.

    In a nutshell, this is a story about a middle-aged guy who lives comfortably in the suburbs. The protagonist has a neighbor who is suffering from the early stages of ALS, and this neighbor and his wife are hosting a block Holiday party at their house. Juxtaposed to this adult party, the protagonist’s teenaged daughter is hosting a party for her friends, which devolves into taking edibles and going to other parties and places. All the while the middle-aged protagonist waxes on life over the last two Covid years while living in this neighborhood.

    Sadly, this story is a structural mess, and too smart for its own good. A large amount of the prose is dedicated to describing clothing and background information on the people who live in this neighborhood. Though colorful, it makes the piece feel bloated, and longer than it needs to be, and this was a longer story. Also, the story had a point of view issue, which seems to have been focused on the middle-aged protagonist, but then the story jumps to what his daughter is doing, but is presented as happening at the same time with no explanation of how the protagonist has come to know the events of his daughter’s evening. This decision makes the story feel incongruent to its internal logic, like Klam wanted this structure more than he thought through how it could happen in this world. But sadly, the great sin of the story is that the protagonist doesn’t go on any sort of journey, or learn anything. What we are given is a character that thinks his life isn’t so bad at the start, and then by the end, he still feels his life isn’t so bad. You know, Dorothy has to think life in Kansas sucked first, so that her realization that there is no place like home has some weight to it. These three issues all feel like unforced errors, like another draft could have addressed and solved them.

    It’s too bad about this piece, as I do think we are just in the beginning of the Covid story era, which will address all of the emotional trauma it caused us. It still might be years before we wrap our collective heads around what happened. But at least people are trying.

  • Having a Family

    I didn’t always want to be a parent. At first, it felt like something that I had to do, or was inventible. And then when I went away to college, I started to think that being a parent wasn’t for me. The fact that I wanted to go into the arts made me feel like I couldn’t be counted on to provide. And then I met my wife, who was open with me, that one day she would want to be a mother. Not that it had to be with me, or that we had to agree on it right now, but it was important to her. I did come around to wanting to become a father, and a parent with her. Not that it didn’t scare the shit out of me, and still does, but the change was that I wanted to do it, even though it was scary.

    I think there is a big difference in wanting to do something and it scares you, and that thing scares me and I don’t want to do it.

    That is also why I am completely understanding people who don’t want to have kids for that reason; I don’t want to do it. If you have taken the time to search your soul, and that is the answer you came up with, Great! And if you have never spent any time thinking about it, and that is also you’re conclusion, Super Great!

    Because we all know the horrible truth of this world; there are people out there who should not be parents, or they became parents for the wrong reasons. And in those situations, the kids are the ones who sufferer, and for no fault of their own.

    Yes, I know there are people out there that learned to love being a parent, but that’s an awful gamble with a kid’s wellbeing.

    I say all of this because, it was a hard-parenting weekend with my daughter. Arguments, and tears, and misunderstandings, and some pretty selfish behavior. It was not fun. What it was, was a whole lotta work. And come this morning, I was tired, and sore for some reason.

    But then, I walked the kid to school, and she asked me if we could play Legos this afternoon, and listen to music.

    And not that it made up for the difficult weekend, but it reminded me of why I wanted to be a parent. Even though it is scary as shit.

  • The Perils of the Upcoming New Normal

    I referred yesterday to the fact that the NYC DOE released the 2021/2022 school schedule, which begins on September 13th, and also includes no snow days, but states all classes will be in person. One way or another, kids will be back in school in September.

    This is a huge step for us, as with the kid back in school, that will give me an opportunity to find a job. A job means the ability to make some progress from the situation we are in, because as it stands now, our condition hasn’t changed since May 2020. That was when I was laid off, and we went into the financial lockdown we are still existing in. Freedom from that is a dream come true.

    And yet, school starting up again will mean an end to my daily existence with the kid. It has been madding, and trying, and difficult, and I am sure that there has been some psychological damage on everyone’s part… But…

    The last time I spent this much uninterrupted time with my daughter was the first month that she was born. I had a month of paternity leave, and the three of us hunkered down together learning how to be a family. And then, I went back to work. With the exception of a day here and there, or maybe a week vacation, I have been working, or she has been in some sort of daycare or school.

    Come that early fall day of September 13th, when I walk her to school for that first day, it will conclude one year and six months of father-daughter bonding. I didn’t know how I would survive it, but now, I am a little sad to see it go.