Excerpt: Scheherazade – Love Letters
A remembrance of my father's letters to his wife and children.
An Excerpt from Love Letters:
… My father was surprised, blindsided even, by how much he loved his children. He came late to fatherhood and didn’t expect the intimacy and personal connection that he found there. He didn’t anticipate the sense of direct identity he would have with his boys. It’s as if he thought his children would be strangers he would get to know, by and by, from across some agreeable paternal divide, from over the upper edge of the New York Times, or through the rear view mirror angled cleverly into the backseat.
But when his children were born there was a surprise, almost from the start. He recognized them somehow, inside and out, even if he didn’t know how or from where. They weren’t strangers at all. And this sense of recognition grew and grew, the pattern becoming more apparent to him with every year, drawing smiles from him suddenly and at odd times, when he was on long walks in the city or during business dinners. They were so familiar these children. Their intelligence. Their promise. Their wit. Their gentleness. The kind eyes. The childlike delight in the world. They were like a beautiful song he was sure he’d heard before. It was as if they were born on the tip of his tongue. But from where?
From where? From where?
The answer, anyone could see, was directly before the confounded.
They were his own beautiful features and traits, the ones submerged from his view, or distorted or hidden in plain sight. They were the parts of him that he denied or was spiritually unable to acknowledge. They were parts he diminished or loathed in his own person. These parts of him were like vulnerable children who had been isolated by quarantine, or punishments in closets, or the laughing stocks. They were the parts that held his wit and his promise. They had his kind eyes, his childlike delight. These were the parts of him you couldn’t honor directly or you’d risk accessing a frustration that could rise to anger –almost as if you were mocking him.
But now his most beautiful qualities were sneaking in from behind and around and below like vines. They were flowering up, pulling on his leg, asking to be picked up, looking at him directly and without guile, love itself moving only inches from his face, pulling off his glasses and laughing, patting his bald head, making the days beautiful with soft smiles and clever children’s thoughts. His having children was not just an opportunity for him to love his children. It was an opportunity for him to love himself.
Life had, in its own time, and rather effortlessly, outsmarted him.
This is a really beautiful description. I had never thought of a father being surprised by love for his children in this way, but it rings so absolutely and touchingly true.
I love the way you say he recognized them somehow, that's so true. So strange that it is always a surprise!