This particular aspect of my book was the most difficult to try and write accurately, fairly and objectively, by far. Especially that last adjective. I believe a lot of men share that complicated relationship with their dads, which is why it’s so relatable, of course.
It seems fairly uncommon from my experience to encounter a man who grew up around the time I did or earlier and doesn’t have at least a few things they look back on and miss or wish they could have back to address differently. I suppose I am an exception to that only because I strive so diligently to avoid being regretful and rather focus on moving forward and accepting the past. Regardless, the part in the movie that almost invariably results in tears for me is the father/son scene or the protagonist describing a fraught relationship with his dad.
What makes a father son relationship memoir worth reading
I think I’ve already expressed my belief that vulnerability in any kind of writing or really any type of art, like a song or a painting is the key to reaching the reader or listener or viewer. Relatability and honesty are woven in there, too, finding their way into the heart and memories of those who stop to consider and think and reflect on their own past.
While reading this type of book, I have no choice but to feel for the author and also to compare my own upbringing and complicated relationship with a man I loved and admired but also never really connected with. That shit hits deep and hard for men like me.
The father son relationship memoir is really about identity
There are so many stories from pop culture about musicians and other artists who never were able to get the approval of their father and typically he’s the one they are trying to please the most. Sometimes they are physically and verbally abusive and other times they just aren’t available, either physically or emotionally. Maybe it’s like being a stand up comedian stalking the stage and generally killing but there’s that one person in the audience who doesn’t laugh and that’s the person they get hung up on.
It can feel a bit odd, awkward even, to be so different than the man who literally co-created you and whose genes you inherited. The man who raised you and did everything he could to make sure you would be a good, honest person in the end.
I had very little in common with my own father, if I am to be completely candid. I have no idea why. It doesn’t bother me as much as it once did, but I did tend to feel like I let him down by not being more like him or being the person he wanted me to be. Only when he was dying in an elder care facility did I finally feel like I had that wrong.
It wasn’t anything he said, either. It was just the moment and the gravity of the situation and the timing all combined. It was realizing he was never going to say the words I wanted him to and accepting that and accepting that just wasn’t his way. I realized that him not saying something was not the same as him not feeling it and it probably bothered him even more than it did me that he never got to where he could fully express himself when it came to that stuff.
Why these stories feel different from polished self-help
You really can’t fake this shit. At least, I can’t.
At the end of my father’s life, after years of my mom and sister as well as my brothers when they could, trying to keep up with his physical and mental decline. My mom knew my dad didn’t want to be in a healthcare facility and she held out for a very long time but at some point she had to accept that she was not physically capable of helping him. AT just over 5 feet tall and having survived cancer, a stroke and a hip replacement herself, if he fell, she couldn’t help him up. It happens all over the world, every day, to people who are just trying to hang on and to make sure their husband or wife has a good quality of life. That’s very real and it can be helpful to read about it when you are going through or have gone through it yourself.
I find very little point in writing motivational content that tries too hard to hide or even mask pain. Writing it and processing it is really the whole point; not just for the reader but for the writer. Even more so for the writer, as there is so much value in expressing it all, even if nobody were to ever read it. It’s just as therapeutic either way. As a writer, I am not pandering or attempting to entertain but rather I am putting down real words about real shit and people can read it or not and like it or not, relate to it or not. That’s really the only way to do it.
The gumption to sit down and to write your story with real purpose and to let everything that you still hold in your memory about that critical stage of your life is not easy for everyone to come by.
The emotional trade-off at the center of every father-son story
I suppose my personal story is not particularly unique. That’s okay with me; I don’t need to be “special” and I realize that I’m really not, or at least not in that regard.
My dad grew up in the 1940’s and 50’s, the son of a man who was even more stoic than he was. He learned by example from his parents in that time and in that small (~50 people) township in Maine and did the best he could, just like most of us do. He graduated high school, joined the Air Force and then married and settled down and started having kids. Just like so many men who grew up at that time and in that region, he believed he needed to be a good provider and disciplinarian. The rest was pretty much up to my mom.
Maybe it is ironic that I chose not to procreate but possess the ability to express myself much more openly to those I love. I suppose I will never know whether that would have carried over into fatherhood. I do prefer that to the other way around though.
Why working-class father stories hit with extra force
It’s probably in part due to the sheer numbers, I suppose. Apparently, somewhere around 35% to 40% (or around 20 million) dads in the US would be considered blue-collar employees with the rest being white collar, self-employed, retired, etc. Relatable AF.
These are the guys who’s dads and their dads before them earned a pair of calloused hands they had to scrub thoroughly before sitting down to dinner each night. The beer drinkers and hell raisers of society who finally settled down and hoped their kids would one day go to college so they could have a “better life” than their mom and dad had.
What readers are really looking for in these memoirs
It’s surprising to me the profound impact a single, simple moment can sometimes have on me, even as I enter my “mid to late” fifties. I think a well-written and honest memoir is definitely capable of impacting a reader’s life quite substantially.
While I never begin a book, movie or anything else with the intention or goal of being “profoundly impacted”, it does tend to happen more often than you’d think. “Life changing”? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your definition of that phrase, which I feel tends to get bandied about a lot. I don’t know if that is what readers are looking for but I do think there is the realization of the possibility of that level of inspiration with a memoir. Or at least to a degree that might not exist in a book about vampires or zombies.
Writing a father son relationship memoir without faking redemption
I can speak to this one quite intelligently having seen my father for the last time over three years ago now. I honestly am not sure if I know what “redemption” even is, to be honest, so I am not capable of faking it in Go Big or Go F*CK Yourself.
More important might be the realization that not all of us get to experience redemption and just moving forward anyway. Just being OK with that and getting on with our lives. Focusing on that, dwelling on it for years probably isn’t the healthiest thing to do with one’s life.
I got what I got and it just has to be good enough for me. And it is. I am a very fortunate person and I have so many things that demand and are worthy of my attention that there just isn’t time to sit around moping about the redemption I didn’t feel like I experienced.
