Greg Knauss, among others, has written about his experiences in contributing to Things I Learned About My Dad (In Therapy), a book by parents about the experiences of fatherhood. I got my copy earlier this week and plowed through it in mostly two quick sessions [which is good; I have been in a serious reading funk, something I should address elsewhere]. Knauss’s comments pretty squarely reflect his essay:
It goes on from there, documenting everything Child Protective Services is going to need to put me away for a long time.
Reading the book, I’m astonished at the quality of every essay that wasn’t written by me. Some are sweet, some are heartbreaking, all are funny — it’s a wonderful book, and it truly is an honor to be included. I’m now forever squatting squarely next to some of the best writers on the Web, and they can’t do anything about it, ha ha ha ha.
Told you I was kind of an asshole.
Yeah, well, he is. But he’s an endearing one [at least to me].
Being single myself, you might wonder what attraction a book like this has for me. Well, several of my friends have kids now, and they write about them. It’s fun, because I can go back and look at entries they’ve written and have good memories, even if I’m just barely a part of these kids’ lives—being as, you know, I’m just some dude that’s friends with their parents that comes over from time to time and takes attention away from the star of the show [them] because–GASP!–I want to talk to the parental units. Heh.
Heather Armstrong, Dooce herself, edited the essays and contributed two of her own. As I’ve read the monthly newsletters that she’s written her daughter, Leta, I’ve felt a lot of emotions—most of all, jealousy. In this month’s letter, Heather talks about the stresses of criticism of people writing about their kids and all the obvious critiques that come of it:
But I guess there are some people who are very uncomfortable with the fact that I and many other women are writing about our children on our websites. How dare we violate your privacy like this, how dare we endanger you like this, we obviously care more about ad revenue than what this is going to do to your adolescence. And I have been asked countless times if I am at all worried that you will totally resent me for the details I have shared here. Of course you will you resent me. I have no doubt that you will spend years of your life resenting me and being embarrassed that we have the same last name, despite the fact that I have and will spend years of my life writing love letters to you on the Internet. Despite the fact that I have declared to millions of people that you are the most amazing thing that has ever happened to my life.
You will resent me for your curfew and the fact that I will not let you leave the house in that mini-skirt. You will resent me for showing up to your school in my pajama bottoms and for raising my hand in a PTA meeting when I hadn’t brushed my hair. You will text message your friends to tell them that I am the most horrible person on the planet because I’m forcing you to study for your exam in the morning. You are going to think that I cannot possibly understand what you are going through, and you will slam the door in my face.
Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.
Let me be honest: if we’d have had the Internet in the early 1980s, my mother would have blogged the shit out of me and my older brother. You would’ve read all sorts of interesting, hilarious, and terrifying stories about us.
I don’t want to get too much into our family dynamics here, but suffice it to say that, growing up, my older brother wasn’t classically gifted in academic ways, and I was. He hated school; I loved it. He was [and still largely is] an introvert; I, well, I never frickin’ shut up. If you read all the bunk of the birth order folks, you’d think we were born out of order—but hell, no, people. Doug and I are who we are because of the sum of our experiences, as varied as they are. Because of the spread between us [five years, ten months] and the fact that Dad was Air Force [meaning we moved every four years, most of the time], we never went through the same stages in life in the same places. We never had the same teachers; only once, when I was in kindergarten and he in sixth grade, did we attend the same school. We are, functionally, two only children who happen to have the same parents. Doesn’t mean that I don’t love him, ’cause I do. We’re just … startlingly different.
I’m sure that Mom would’ve written a couple hundred things that would’ve mortified me when I read them at 14, but she also would’ve written a thousand more that would make me smile, laugh, cry, and appreciate what they went through that much more. And I admit … I would love to have those stories now as I near 30. Well, I do have them, but you don’t have them, Internet. And while it’s narcissistic to want you to read them, I am a blogger.
Anyhow, if you want to read engaging essays on fatherhood, Things I Learned About My Father (In Therapy) is terribly good and worth your time. [And for my friends who are parents and are broke because they're buying diapers, I'll let you borrow my copy as long as your kids don't gnaw on it. 'kay?]