#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Feather in the grass
“. . . when my kids were little. . . I was trying to show them that there was enough beauty right in front of us, and the neighborhood, on the bus, at the library, to sustain us. There was beauty in the trees, and the graffiti, the taco stands, and the people. We belonged to a world. Our neighborhood was one that none of their Disney movies or Nickolodeon shows ever told them was beautiful. I wanted to deprogram them, help them see that beauty was feral and wild, democratic and free. That it belonged to us, whoever, wherever, however we were. . .”
Excerpt from Carvell Wallace, “Facing Into the Wind” today’s Sunday Read essay via podcast.
It’s so late when I wake up. The day is swiftly passing. Frank, the father in this family, is out in the heat of the morning, working in the garden with our daughter, roto-tilling the soil for her new plants. I stay indoors to write and send my weekly Aim for Astonishing writing prompt email. I open the closet full of photos and rummage. I have an idea of what I want to write about; I collect five or so photos involving fathering, and then I sit down to write. I end up using only one photo, the photo of Frank I took in the Chama River Desert when we hiked there a few years ago. And that becomes my theme; wounded man in search of his gifts, from a quote by Robert Bly:
“Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the wound appears in our psyches, whether from alcoholic father, shaming mother, shaming father, abusing mother, whether it stems from isolation, disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will give our major gift to the community.” ― Robert Bly, Iron John: A Book about Men
If you aren’t a subscriber to my weekly Aim for Astonishing prompt, and you want me to send you the e-mail, I will. (Just email me at kellydumar@gmail.com). By noon, we go for a swim in the hot, hot sun at my friend’s dock. All the kids except one of my daughters is there, and we swim and paddle board with the dogs, and I am achingly happy to be in the water, swimming and playing in summer. I walk home through the woods with Charlie, and the first thing I see in the grass is the beautiful feather, tender and light and still on the earth. A very handsome, white-tail buck, leaps across the trail ahead of us. A lovely father’s day sighting. It’s muggy and breezeless in the shelter of green leafed trees, and there are two runners, and no one else but us in the peaceful day. I listen to the podcast of the essay I quote at the top of this blog, crafted so gorgeously and thoughtfully by Carvell Wallace, talking about being a father. There is a lot of pain, and woundedness in his essay, the unique woundedness of being a black man, and also a father. And there is a lot of joy in the essay, about being a father. He describes, so exquisitely, the universal trials and challenges of being a parent of teenagers. My children are now young adults, and I have lived through, unscarred, this tumultuous stage. And they gather for our dinner and then our circle of ritual after, in the yard, as we share what we most appreciate about Frank as a father. And then, I ask everyone to share about what they think he’ll be like as a grandfather. Because, by Father’s Day next year, he will be one. He will have a grandson to celebrate, a new role, a new relationship. And then my son plays his flute in the yard as the sun is sinking over the horizon, while we sit in our socially distanced circle of belonging.
Frank in the Chama River Desert