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06/09/2016 12:01 AMWhen my father died earlier this year at 91, I grieved the loss of the man I knew and also the man I didn’t know, and whom I never felt really knew me, either.
When people asked me how I was doing, I responded, “It’s complicated.”
A new book, Forty Sons and Daughters Finding Father Within by Jess Maghan of Chester, author, editor, and recently retired professor of criminal justice, is filled with the stories of complicated relationships with fathers. They are written by sons and daughters, many of my generation, many who live locally.
The book, beautifully illustrated by Sam Lindberg of Essex, was originally published in 2008 under the title 40 Fathers and has just been republished by Elm Grove Press in Mystic.
“…this book has long stood in the corner of my heart, silently waiting to deliver unsaid messages between my own father and myself. Messages that have now been discovered through the humanity of these collective voices, willing to tell the truth and see what happens, in recording their journey of finding father in their inner self,” Maghan says in the preface.
When I read the stories—even the painful ones—I was left with a sense of hope, a sense that the writers had overcome obstacles and hurts of the past and had mended their relationships with their fathers, either in the flesh or in their own hearts and minds after their fathers had died.
And, if they were parents, they had made a clear and conscious effort, just as I have, to do better, to create a closer, less conditional bond with their own children than they themselves experienced.
So, I caught up with several of the people featured in the book and asked them to expand on what they had encapsulated so poignantly in the 350 words they were each allotted.
Peter Good, owner of Cummings & Good design firm in Chester, with his wife Jan Cummings, says that he had a less than perfect relationship with his father, but that his attitude has changed over the years.
“As you get older and put in perspective your own life experiences: raising children, working, providing for your family, it gives you a deeper understanding of the plight of your parents,” Good says. “So, what started out early in my life as psychological baggage I carried with me, dilutes over the years and you have a kinder understanding of your parents and how they acted because they were a product of their lives.”
Good says he vowed he’d never treat his own sons the way he was treated growing up, noting that an incredibly loving mother compensated for what he didn’t get from his father.
“I don’t want to say I was a perfect parent,” Good stresses, “but I think the key is love and empathy—trying to put yourself in [your children’s] position, particularly during the teenage years. We had arguments, but we always made up, came back together. They went through phases, I went through phases. If there’s anything I regret is working too hard when they were younger.”
Good is proud of the way his son and daughter-in-law parent their own children.
“They’re wonderful parents, different from me, and better in many ways,” he says. “They live close by and I feel very fortunate. We see our grandchildren quite often. They’re the best possible kids. I have nothing but gratitude.”
Being the first generation daughter of an Italian immigrant had a profound effect on the relationship Catherine Conant had with her father.
“My father was from a region in Southern Italy where women were seen as a drudge,” says Conant, a professional storyteller/educator in the nonprofit sector. “He didn’t believe daughters did anything but cost you money and bring you shame. A lot of it was cultural. Women weren’t valued.”
Like Good, Conant says her mother was her saving grace.
“She worked really hard to make us feel valued and loved.”
Conant says she married someone who had a more privileged but equally dysfunctional family and that in raising their own children—now grown with their own families—they made a conscious decision to break the cycle of neglect, disconnection, and fear.
“They knew they could have an opinion and they would be heard,” says Conant, who lived in Chester for more than 20 years. “We instilled in them very quickly to tell us what’s going on, what’s happening.”
Conant was never able to directly tell her father, who had a dementing illness, how much he had hurt her, damaged her sense of self. So she went into therapy instead so she could stand next to his coffin and say goodbye and let it go to the best of her ability.
“I’ve come to a place where I not only forgive him, I acknowledge gratitude because who he was in my life forced me to become a stronger, smarter, more capable person,” she reflects. “Because if I wasn’t one of those things, I wasn’t going to make it through the day.”
Conant is also grateful that her own son and daughter were spared the kind of childhood she had.
“They’re both in happy marriages with superb careers and I’m looking at their children and saying, ‘You’re doing this much better than I did.’’
Forty Sons and Daughters Finding Father Within by Jess Maghan & Sam Lindberg is $18.95, softcover, and is available on Amazon.com and at local bookstores. Maghan and Lindberg will sign copies of their book on Saturday, June 11 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Bank Square Books, 53 West Main Street, Mystic. For more information, call 860-536-3795 or visit www.banksquarebooks.com.
Amy J. Barry is a Baby Boomer, who lives in Stony Creek with her husband and assorted pets. She writes features and reviews for Shore Publishing newspapers and is an expressive arts educator. Email her at aimwrite@snet.net or at www.aimwrite-ct.net. Read more My Generation columns online at www.zip06.com