The day I read this post about Heather Armstrong's collection, Things I Learned About My Dad (in Therapy), I clicked on the picture of the book cover and ordered myself an advance copy. I've been reviewing a ton of books over at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews, but since I sought this one out and didn't receive it from the normal publicity channels, I choose to review it here.
I thought it interesting that I didn't receive it through the normal publicity channels. Surely a book by a blogger would go through the blogger outreach so many new titles are receiving. But, like so many of my experiences with Heather, Heather does not come to you -- you come to Heather. And despite the fact that maybe you have other things to do, maybe you should really do laundry, you can't resist the sucking vortex that is Dooce. At least I can't.
I met Heather at BlogHer 2006. It was my first BlogHer conference, and Heather was on a panel about making a living as a blogger. I think a few panels before that was the mommyblogging panel, and when Alice or Mir or Tracey or someone pointed out that Heather was in the back of the room, the entire room turned around to gawk at her. Heather actually bent in half, hiding. I thought she might crawl under the table.
She gave a really good talk. Heather is very articulate. At the end of her panel, there was an awkward silence, because we weren't really sure if she was finished talking. She took a deep breath and said, "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen." And that was when I knew I thought she was pretty great.
Afterward, I went up and shyly introduced myself. Heather strikes an intimidating pose. She is 800 feet tall and quite thin, and she dresses in that casually hip way of Bossy that this former-sorority girl finds intimidating. I am not tall and thin, and thus anything I wear comes off looking "perky."
I told Heather the name of my blog, and she smiled and said she remembered it because somebody spray-painted "Surrender Dorothy" on an overpass near the Mormon Temple in Washington, DC.
Funny, this blog name to me means tornadoes and chaos and realizing you're not in charge, but to Heather it meant a connection to a former religion. Funny how titles work.
So anyway, this is a really long intro to say I was very interested to read Heather's book. Last night, I finished it. Beloved looked up from SportsCenter around 10:30 and looked surprised. "You read over half that book tonight," he said. "Was it a fast read or was it just too good to put down?"
It wasn't a fast read. It was a slow and dangerous read, a dark and twisty and sentimental read. A collection of stories invoking all sorts of fathers, goofy fathers, angry fathers, fathers suffering from dementia and conservatism, fathers as overwhelmed as mothers, fathers preparing to divorce mothers, fathers reliving their Star Wars infatuations with their sons. Earnest fathers. Scared fathers. Loving fathers. Human fathers. The collection reminds me of the Deadwood bar in Iowa City, a land of dark booths, horrible coffee and upside-down Christmas trees. Thick and smoke-filled and shot through with cool. The people who were comfortable there will like this book. I loved the Deadwood.
Finishing this book made me think of my own father, currently trundling around the western United States with my mother, a notebook computer and an itinerary on a spreadsheet. My farmer father who fell back on mechanical engineering, the man who built a home computer out of a TV that had been hit by lightning. The man who heats his house with an intricate corn-boiling system. The man who stood in the kitchen eating cookies by the sleeve when my mother got cancer during my tween years, when he wasn't really sure what to do for his two young girls. The man who stepped up to the plate in the best way he knew how. The man who my mother thinks I love more than her, but I don't. I love them different, as you do.
The other thing I noticed when I finished the book was that I immediately begin composing this post in my head, even though I was too tired to write it down. Reading good writing makes me want to write, even though I won't do it as well, and there are so many great sentences, poignant themes, beautiful metaphors and moments of irony in these essays that I wanted to write immediately, but my head was too full with thoughts of my father and his father and the grandfather on my mother's side that I never knew. So I went up to bed and fell asleep and dreamed of my childhood instead.
From the last essay, "Not My Problem," by Bill Farrell, in which he discusses fatherhood with his cat:
"I thought I could stop the clock," I told Kink, "you know, stop time. Just for a while. but I never could. The clock just went faster and faster. And like a clock, I got wound up in all of their activities, and before I knew it, they were all gone and I was here with you. How did that happen? How could I let that happen?"
"You couldn't stop it if you tried," Kink said. "As a father, you're the best at what you do when you're at the end of what you do. You supported, you cheered, you sympathized, you sacrificed, you learned, you laughed and cried, often at the same time, and most of all you prepared your children for this moment at which you are here with me."
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