Tag: Father

  • Staten Island Ferry

    I need to admit to myself, that as long as the kid is young enough to need me to get around the City, that every Spring Break will be a week of me entertaining the kid. There is a voice in my head that keeps saying that it’s not my job to keep the kid entertained, and that is true. But “entertaining the kid” for me means that I am keeping her off a screen for a couple of hours.

    To that end, we rode the Staten Island Ferry yesterday. It’s free, runs every thirty minutes, and gives you an amazing view of the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. That also means the ferry is loaded with tourists. But if you know what you’re getting into, it can be a lot of fun.

    The kid had never been on the ferry, and she also hadn’t been to Staten Island before. I mean, she is a natural born New Yorker, and if you’re going to be a New Yorker, you have to have visited all five boroughs.

    I love riding the ferry. It used to be one of the “go to” attractions I would take people to when they came to visit, but I hadn’t been on the thing in close to eight years. It’s fun to cross the upper harbor and see the City from the water. I like trying to imagine what it was like to live there, 500 years ago, before the Dutch arrived. But then to also think what it must have looked like when the British Navy blockaded the harbor and invaded Brooklyn. The history buff side of me goes into over drive thinking about how many events and persons have passed through that harbor. You know, once it got so cold that the harbor froze, and you could walk across the ice from Manhattan to Staten Island.

    Watching the kid experience the ferry was a parental treat that I enjoyed deeply. Seeing her enjoy the cold air whipping her hair around, and asking me questions about ships, and New York, and the old forts that ring the harbor. It was fun to have these moments of entertaining her for the afternoon.

  • The Selfish Act of Parenting

    I’ve had a rough couple of years. From my mother’s death, moves, career changes, and a pandemic, it’s been a lot. On the whole, I’m good, but like everyone of late, I do have rough days, where I do despair and wonder, what am I doing with my life?

    One of the things I tell myself, or remind myself is more accurate, is a question I was asked a while ago from a good friend; Why can’t your purpose be to become the best father that you can be? Let that guide you, and everything else will fall in line to that.

    Like I said, I have to remind myself of that. And I can fully admit that a mess up often as a father. I do my best, I’m not perfect, but I hope that raising a daughter who knows she loved and supported in what she does will go a long way in helping her become a strong and independent woman.

    I thought about that this morning as I was making breakfast for the kid, and we talked about what we would do on this first day of Summer vacation. And then I thought about the selfless act of being a parent… But is it selfless?

    Follow me on this; if by choosing to be the best father I can be is to give myself a purpose, then isn’t the quality parenting that my daughter receives just a positive side effect of a selfish act? I’m not choosing to be a good parent strictly to be a good parent, but if by choosing to be a good father to my kid makes me feel like a good person, than aren’t I putting myself first?

    I can admit that these thoughts are a “Chicken or the Egg” quandary. Does it really matter who gets put first if the end result is that the child receives quality parenting?

    Do I have too much time on my hands, and thus think about details that have no effect on the whole?

    That’s all possible.

    (Oh, and if you like what you read, please take a second to like, share, or leave a comment.)

  • Short Story Review: “One Sun Only” by Camille Bordas

    (The short story “One Sun Only,” by Camille Bordas appeared in the March 7th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Having kids is easy, raising kids is hard. And on some days, you screw everything up, and it really sucks. Every time we make a mistake as parents, which is often, the wife and I kid each other that whatever the transgression we just inflicted on our daughter, that it will be the reason she goes into therapy. My mother would joke/not-joke that when I was in therapy, she was getting blamed for everything. Not everything, I would tell her, Dad made a lot of mistakes, too. Kidding each other was a big part of our relationship, and so was making lots of mistakes.

    I identified with “One Sun Only,” by Camille Bordas. It was a story about a middle-aged guy, trying to make it as a writer, dealing with the death of a parent, raising his kids while also making sure his children were coping with the death of their grandparent in a healthy way. (Holy Crap! It’s like this story was written for me!) But also, the story was about the relationship that the grandfather has with his son, and his grandchildren. The grandfather was a famous painter, and art played a big role in his dealings with his family. Of the two grandchildren, the older one, Sally, had the same artistic interest as her grandfather, and thus he showed her the most attention. Though the younger grandchild, Ernest, had the artistic skill, he was not interested in the form, which caused a distance between grandfather and grandson.

    Essentially, this was a story about death, and how different people deal/handle/cope with it. There was another death in the story, a school janitor who had a heart attack and dropped dead in front of Ernest and his classmates in the cafeteria at school, so the theme of the story was driven home pretty hard here. The most authentic parts of this story were the interactions between Ernest and his father, the narrator, especially when Ernest was drawing at the kitchen table toward the end. My only objection to the story was that the children point out how sad their father was, but I never felt the “sadness” was identified, given an example, or even addressed. It was just pointed out, and left at that. See, that stuck in the back of my mind as a red flag. Sally was given ample time to show how she was dealing with the grandfather’s death, and the climax of the story was clearly about Ernest ability to cope, but nothing for the father. The father was seen taking advantage of the money he had inherited, as he had bought a new apartment, and was taking a year off from work to write, but not how he was emotionally handling all of this. I do know that when a trauma occurs, some people make immediate changes in hopes of dealing with the emotions, which I felt was what Bordas was hinting at with the father, but he seemed to be enjoying these changes even though his children said he was “sad.” It’s like one puzzle piece was missing that would have tied all three together in their mourning.

    Also, this was a story about parenting; Both the good and the bad. Pushing your kids, and nurturing them. Tough love and understanding. The grandfather and father were not saints, and their parenting styles were opposite, but not completely wrong. For all the faults of the grandfather, he was using his skill set to raise his son the best he could. And his son was doing the same thing with his children. The story did leave me feeling hopeful for these characters. That they would get to the other side of this, in their own way.