5236. Fantasy Fatherhood
The … Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense,
including dependence of one being on another, and including …
not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.
Darwin, The Origin of Species
I would have been a terrible father. The only kids I’ve ever hoped to have are those who would only be my kids when they felt like it. That’s not fatherhood: that’s fantasy. “When you get right down to it,” as my mother likes to say, no one selects his inheritance (the color of the eyes, most contours of the I).
Speaking of fantasies and my mother, did I ever tell you how she used to read me all those stories about animal families when I was a child? They were all about different species living together and looking out for one another. There was usually one father figure amongst them whom no one was really afraid of—not really, anyway, not for very long.
The older animals would tell the younger animals about him—how he would come down hard on them if they got too far out of line. But I think the young ones usually saw through the fantasy pretty quickly. I think they only pretended to be scared and only for as long it suited them. I think they must have known that it was just a story the older ones felt like telling.
Note: “a base libel on Badger, who, though he cared little about Society was rather fond of children” (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows).
Things pass away, like a tale that is told.
Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
And then all kinds come along to fill in for the things that have passed away. Some are so young that they’ve never heard your story before. Some are as old as the love that knows to pretend that it hasn’t.
Note: “the storyteller … at home” (Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller”).
