Uncovering Silent Secrets: The Untold Conversations in “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About”
“The eldest daughter has a special privilege: I get to see the layers of my father, all his various modes. We will never discuss it explicitly, but I got to grow with him, beside him, in ways others never will. And now, as our fears converge in this horrific war, we, at last, have each other. And we will sit here, and peel apples, and grieve.”
I experienced, perhaps, the deepest connection with Joanna Rakoff’s essay “A Storybook Childhood,” a work that attempts to peel away the mythologies our parents sometimes create. As the author spelunks through her past with both of her parents, a realization dawns: her father’s stories were shared not to lionize his past but to protect his wife’s. After graduating college, the author finally learns some of the truth of her mother’s past, including the fact that her mother had been born out of wedlock, news her father forbade her from broaching with her mother. “My mind could not keep up with this information.” (My connection with the essay is rooted more in the fact that my maternal grandfather was, like Ms. Rakoff’s father, a New Yorker given to fabulation.)
