silver linings
this isn't a real entry- it's a personal essay that i had to write for my english class. it's cut as to not pagerape everyone :]
You, as a person, are born into a unique set of circumstances. Some people are born lucky. Some people are born late, and thusly are always catching up. Some sources contrarily state that we born either guilty or innocent- stained or pure. That is too grand a scale.
Life can only be lived moment by moment. The collective humanity, therefore, is shaped birth by birth. What about those of us born old, or maybe just to old parents? What does that do to you?
Old parents are not few nor far-between. Older fathers, in fact, are such a strange and regular occurrence that they’ve been branded- SODs. Start-over dads.
Are there benefits, one asks, to having an older father? Yes, says I. Numerous.
On the eve of my birth, my father was well into his sixty-fourth year. Ahead of me were four sisters -biological and adopted- ranging from ten to forty-eight years my senior.
My sisters were angry. Sharp phone calls and unanswered messages reigned when they were told I was coming. “What are you thinking?” was demanded of him often. Two of the girls already had children of their own. One might’ve said, looking at the family tree, that I was Father’s Little Indiscretion. I may well have been called that. It’s well-known, however, that world views are turned upside down when small, red, wailing packages are delivered. In this case, it’s very true.
My father had already lived a full life up until the year 1991. He had three grown daughters, beautiful women with families of their own. Voices belonging to small feet and bright eyes called him Granddad over the phone. The year 1991 changed that. He remarried, and another daughter, this one aged eight, was added to the mix. Older sisters sent magical birthday gifts; they wished their father and his new family well.
Two years later, I came.
In those two years, something happened. My eldest sisters suddenly became aware of our father’s mortality. He, somehow, did not. This fact, it seems, is the more important one. Since he ignored it so steadfastly it meant that I, too, was allowed to stumble upon this idea on my own. This is where the benefits start.
Having once already raised a full plate of beautiful and successful daughters, having once already navigated the slippery slopes of marriage, I would say my father knew, a little, what he was doing. (He diligently disagrees.)
He’s okay with being wrong. We can have the Scary Conversations. That I’m his second-go-round means he’s allowed me to be some strange mix of informal and respecting, and that, I think, is dominantly responsible for my social skills and manners. Osmotically-absorbed memories make me value the clearest communication. A desire has been fostered in me to speak all of his languages, to look at all of the world’s skies, to put my feet in the sand of every beach he remembers.
Of my father’s best points, there is simple age and experience. No one, he tells me, will treat you the way Daddy does. Help is infrequent; honesty downright rare. World history, first-hand, is served with midnight snacks. My father, intentionally or not, has tried to teach me each lesson that he had to learn the hard way.
As a small digression, the first time I swore in front of my father, he sat me down at the table with enough silver for a six-course meal. And so the choice was presented: if you’re old enough to swear, you’re old enough to eat like an adult. There is not one without the other- no one will take you seriously.
Only one lesson has escaped him and me until now. Death comes quietly; the little tag on the big toe; but it always comes. Owlishly, it has turned its eyes to us.
The fact that my father wouldn’t live forever struck me when I was ten. The fact that he soon (too, too soon) wouldn’t be here dawned starkly short years later, and when it did, I starting asking questions.
Insistently, I demanded answers about his life. Every name, memory- I wanted them to be mine, too, the same way that my blood is his blood, his happiness is my happiness.
In hindsight, my sisters were right to be angry; I am angry now. “What were you thinking?” is a question worth asking. We’re all quite astounded that he’s going to see me graduate high school.
When I ask my father about his life, he tells me sad stories, dark stories. Trust lost, opportunities ignored, chances shunned. That’s not the rule of thumb, though.
“Silver linings,” my father says. “All my rain clouds had silver linings.”
One frequently revisited story is of a Chilean fortune-teller, in Chile, sometime in the early 1970’s. “She said, ‘You’ll stay there for your poco princesa rubia.’ And I laughed. All my women were dark-haired.”
It wasn’t until twenty years later that I came, and then, less than a decade thereafter, the crumbling marriage (with the woman he’d abandoned his first wife for) finally gave way. I knew my father’s heart was broken in the way that children understand those second-hand emotions.
“But then there was you; my little blonde princess. My greatest silver lining.”
It’s mutual. His death is a cliff I know is coming but cannot yet see; a hurricane fore-cast. This is what my sisters were angry about- how does a child cope with a death of this magnitude? But simply in being his I am a different kind of ready. The wreckage is coming, that much is true. But I will be put back together by the silver linings of his life.
An older father? He’s the only reason I know it’ll be okay.
You, as a person, are born into a unique set of circumstances. Some people are born lucky. Some people are born late, and thusly are always catching up. Some sources contrarily state that we born either guilty or innocent- stained or pure. That is too grand a scale.
Life can only be lived moment by moment. The collective humanity, therefore, is shaped birth by birth. What about those of us born old, or maybe just to old parents? What does that do to you?
Old parents are not few nor far-between. Older fathers, in fact, are such a strange and regular occurrence that they’ve been branded- SODs. Start-over dads.
Are there benefits, one asks, to having an older father? Yes, says I. Numerous.
On the eve of my birth, my father was well into his sixty-fourth year. Ahead of me were four sisters -biological and adopted- ranging from ten to forty-eight years my senior.
My sisters were angry. Sharp phone calls and unanswered messages reigned when they were told I was coming. “What are you thinking?” was demanded of him often. Two of the girls already had children of their own. One might’ve said, looking at the family tree, that I was Father’s Little Indiscretion. I may well have been called that. It’s well-known, however, that world views are turned upside down when small, red, wailing packages are delivered. In this case, it’s very true.
My father had already lived a full life up until the year 1991. He had three grown daughters, beautiful women with families of their own. Voices belonging to small feet and bright eyes called him Granddad over the phone. The year 1991 changed that. He remarried, and another daughter, this one aged eight, was added to the mix. Older sisters sent magical birthday gifts; they wished their father and his new family well.
Two years later, I came.
In those two years, something happened. My eldest sisters suddenly became aware of our father’s mortality. He, somehow, did not. This fact, it seems, is the more important one. Since he ignored it so steadfastly it meant that I, too, was allowed to stumble upon this idea on my own. This is where the benefits start.
Having once already raised a full plate of beautiful and successful daughters, having once already navigated the slippery slopes of marriage, I would say my father knew, a little, what he was doing. (He diligently disagrees.)
He’s okay with being wrong. We can have the Scary Conversations. That I’m his second-go-round means he’s allowed me to be some strange mix of informal and respecting, and that, I think, is dominantly responsible for my social skills and manners. Osmotically-absorbed memories make me value the clearest communication. A desire has been fostered in me to speak all of his languages, to look at all of the world’s skies, to put my feet in the sand of every beach he remembers.
Of my father’s best points, there is simple age and experience. No one, he tells me, will treat you the way Daddy does. Help is infrequent; honesty downright rare. World history, first-hand, is served with midnight snacks. My father, intentionally or not, has tried to teach me each lesson that he had to learn the hard way.
As a small digression, the first time I swore in front of my father, he sat me down at the table with enough silver for a six-course meal. And so the choice was presented: if you’re old enough to swear, you’re old enough to eat like an adult. There is not one without the other- no one will take you seriously.
Only one lesson has escaped him and me until now. Death comes quietly; the little tag on the big toe; but it always comes. Owlishly, it has turned its eyes to us.
The fact that my father wouldn’t live forever struck me when I was ten. The fact that he soon (too, too soon) wouldn’t be here dawned starkly short years later, and when it did, I starting asking questions.
Insistently, I demanded answers about his life. Every name, memory- I wanted them to be mine, too, the same way that my blood is his blood, his happiness is my happiness.
In hindsight, my sisters were right to be angry; I am angry now. “What were you thinking?” is a question worth asking. We’re all quite astounded that he’s going to see me graduate high school.
When I ask my father about his life, he tells me sad stories, dark stories. Trust lost, opportunities ignored, chances shunned. That’s not the rule of thumb, though.
“Silver linings,” my father says. “All my rain clouds had silver linings.”
One frequently revisited story is of a Chilean fortune-teller, in Chile, sometime in the early 1970’s. “She said, ‘You’ll stay there for your poco princesa rubia.’ And I laughed. All my women were dark-haired.”
It wasn’t until twenty years later that I came, and then, less than a decade thereafter, the crumbling marriage (with the woman he’d abandoned his first wife for) finally gave way. I knew my father’s heart was broken in the way that children understand those second-hand emotions.
“But then there was you; my little blonde princess. My greatest silver lining.”
It’s mutual. His death is a cliff I know is coming but cannot yet see; a hurricane fore-cast. This is what my sisters were angry about- how does a child cope with a death of this magnitude? But simply in being his I am a different kind of ready. The wreckage is coming, that much is true. But I will be put back together by the silver linings of his life.
An older father? He’s the only reason I know it’ll be okay.