The following is an excerpt of:
Hiraeth:
The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became
By Tex Batmart
If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here
Interlude: On Fatherhood
It has been observed by this author that the lack of a father does not necessarily preclude the healthy and otherwise normal development of a child, nor the does presence of said paternal force ensure that a child will turn out all right in the end. And, though his childhood was spent in the absence of his father, our protagonist did have many father figures from which to pick and choose. As we will see in later chapters, however, it was this void that he felt so keenly as child which helped to shape him into the man which he would later become. Perhaps it is for the best that he never witnessed the failure of his parents’ marriage, as walking through its aftermath was certainly more than enough. But one cannot help but wonder if it mightn’t have allowed him to lower his expectations, even if just a very little.
When the time came for his own attempt at fatherhood, he found himself spectacularly unprepared for the task at hand, though it had been one of the many goals to which he’d driven himself to attain. In those times, when his patience was long expired, and he seemed at the very precipice of tears, he would think back to the kind, and gentle natures of the men who’d helped him along, pleading with his memories for any sort of guidance. Ultimately, however, he came to understand that their successes had been predicated upon a sort of inexhaustible supply of good humor and delicate care, as well as a basic understanding of simple human interaction, something which he knew that he could never match, and so, instead of standing upon the shoulders of these great men, he fell silent in their shadows.
When he was a child, however, it was all much simpler for him. Without an understanding of complex human mating rituals, the nuance of “boyfriend” was beyond him, and so every man who wooed his mother was immediately interrogated as to whether he would propose to her. This, of course, was a natural reaction to the programs which he watched on television by his mother’s side, as well as an upbringing within the constructs of Traditional Family Values. It never occurred to him that these men might want something anything less than forever, because, even from an early age, he knew the words, “’Til death do we part.”
Of course, he also was quite interested in obtaining a younger brother, one whom he could command around the house and force to do his bidding, and, failing that, someone to fall back upon should the need for a well-placed scapegoat suddenly arise. He’d heard conflicting stories of how little siblings were most commonly generated, but, having ruled out extraordinarily large birds, and vegetable gardens, he deduced that it was something which required a mommy and a daddy, and of these two necessary ingredients, he had but just the one. In later life, he would brush aside his secret desire to have had a younger sibling, and instead insist that he had only been worried about the happiness of his mother. Alas, it is this author’s misfortune to relay that our hero remained an only child, his mother having never chosen to remarry (though he was to learn later that marriage wasn’t entirely integral to the production of the successive generation), and his dreams of brotherhood had to be transferred to his two best friends, both of whom were older (by a month or two), and also both called Dave.
To read the next installment, click here