Father Son Story
My father gave me his
story when he was thirty-seven. When I pass it to friends and strangers now I
make the joke that he was “a little late.” Of course, if he had been a little
earlier I wouldn’t have come to possess his story, or anything else. If the
story had grown heavier sooner I wouldn’t have been summoned into existence. I
imagine him dredging up that story of his, which had been buried so deep, and
tossing it, as gently as an anvil can be tossed, atop my mother. A divorce,
move, and six months later, when he came out to my brothers and I, we learned
how to manage and wield the story he gifted to us.
He is an excellent story
teller. His gestures are grand, his pauses dramatic, and his voice hushed at
all the right moments. He hid himself by way of repression and exaggeration for
years – leveling and sharpening edges of his narrative to avoid it catching on society’s
wayward glances. It only follows that his ability to weave stories, from the
mundane to the epic, has earned him the status of master craftsman.
He practiced more than
anyone else.
When he gave me the
story it was as smooth and small a pebble as he could make it, though my
eight-year-old self described it as monolithic. I carry it lightly, now. It is
not something that weighs me down. I have refashioned that pebble, that boulder
into a lever and a looking glass.
