Not So Good At ItLet’s step aside and look at my parents and how their backgrounds brought me to the cliff-edge at the end of innocent and androgynous childhood.
My father was born in 1908 and his father was lost at sea about two years later. He was raised by his mother and/or boarding school in Wales. What did he know of parenting and compassion? If there is such a thing as ‘dour Welsh’, that he was. As I knew him, after a few years of early childhood interaction (say, until I was the age he had been when he lost his parent/s), I knew him as either A. Laughing at Milton Berle, B. Glowering over his stamp collection after work (“Don’t bother Daddy”) or C. whacking the back of my hand at dinner for some unknown and minor infraction. Remember where I cut myself years later? Yep the back of
