this feeling…unspoken and unacknowledged and invisible

~ Live & Learn

Michael Chabon, in his new collection of autobiographical essays, “Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces”…shares various insights into fatherhood…In one essay, he recalls a recent visit to his own father…The older man was recovering from an illness, and the two lay on a bed and watched a movie together in silence. It took Mr. Chabon back to his own childhood, when they often sat together quietly watching movies… The realization made him more conscious of the importance of sharing such time with his own children: Just being together was valuable. “That makes me look more mindfully at moments where I’m sitting on a couch with my daughter watching shows on HGTV,” he says. “I’m sitting here and she’s sitting there and she puts her feet up on my lap.”  “…this feeling,” he says, “that this is a way that I experience love…that is unspoken and unacknowledged and invisible.”

~ Alexandra Wolfe, edited from Michael Chabon Wants to be a Good Father (WSJ, June 8, 2018)

18 thoughts on “this feeling…unspoken and unacknowledged and invisible”

  7. Not long after our son died, a friend of mine came up to me and said, “I will always remember his last day at school and you were walking with him back to your car and you touched his hair gently and smiled at him and she said, I could see how much you loved him in that moment.” In my agony, I was so touched she reminded me of this precious moment. They are fleeting, but we are changed forever by them. 💚

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