Growing up fatherless revisited

The Brothers Karamazov has been pushed aside already. Yesterday I received Father Fiction, by Don Miller, a memoir of sorts about growing up without a father, in the mail. Tim Challies actually suggested I read this years ago, when it was called To Own a Dragon (yes, I sent an email to Tim Challies and he wrote back to me — isn’t that nice? — though as I recall he said he hadn't read the book, it was just an idea).

I keep trying to explore the fatherless idea, on and off in my life. Sometimes I forget about it, and other times I feel like there is some big piece of me missing, or rather a piece of understanding of the way things are supposed to be that is missing, and of knowing how to do things, and that the clue lies in growing up fatherless. The clue to things like why I can never seem to work anything out with guys, for one. I keep wondering if there is something I will read one day that will suddenly make sense of everything. But I doubt that.

So I started to read Father Fiction while I walked home. I was interrupted for a time by the first aid officer from work catching up with me, meaning I had to put my book away and make small talk till they went there own way, but soon I could get back to it. Then I was killing myself laughing — which means shaking and quietly spluttering, because I was out in public you know — when another woman came up behind me and must have thought I was crazy. Then last night on the couch a few tears made their way slowly down my face.

Flicking back I can’t find any particular, short passage to quote. But in chapter two I was well and truly sucked in by Don writing this:

It makes you wonder if by having a dad around—just his being there reading the morning paper and smoking cigars at poker with his friends and having him read you a story at night—you were supposed to understand something. Lately, I have been curious about what that something is, and whether or not a person could understand it even if his father took off.

Yes. Then later he writes:

It’s odd to be talking about this as an adult. But as I’ve processed the ramifications of growing up without a father, I’ve realised the incredible hole in my heart this absence has left.

I understand. It’s why a few years ago I wrote a poem called The Hole. (I posted it here, but I am not going to link it – I am scarcely game enough to go back and look at it myself, lest I cringe.)

I might post some pertinent bits as I go along. So far I am liking this book.