When we were younger. almost done raising our kids. I have not been writing many blogs in this space lately. I lost my wife this past year and I’ve been writing a memoir. Going through things in my house, sadly transitioning to living alone and finding things I had forgotten. A photo put away that didn’t mean as much as it does now. Another photo that floods the memory. A note written that reminded me how simple it was to write then and how impossible it is to write now. My memoir is about a boy who hungered for his father. That hunger was never satisfied. But I met a young woman who learned to love me despite my lack of knowing how to be a man or how to treat a woman. Kathy is her name, and she became my wife. With her help, I learned to be the father my father never was while remaining a work in progress as a husband.
My first book, The Power of Dadhood, was a huge effort for me, and very successful for an unknown, first-time author. As a technical guy—a pilot, then an engineer, I didn’t know how to write at all. But I wanted to put on paper what I learned as a kid with a mostly absent father, and as a father myself. Because Kathy worked with parents and their children as a parent educator, she taught me so much, especially how important the connection is between parent and child in their first three years.
It’s been over twenty years since I began The Power of Dadhood, and seven years since it was published. My memoir, with a working title of The Vagabonds: A Memoir of Father Hunger, is the story of why I wrote my first book. Currently, my final manuscript is being edited.
When I sat down to write, what you see here was not what was intended. It’s too early to push my memoir, likely months away from publishing. What I was going to write was a small moment I had documented quickly in those small memoranda pads I kept with me before smartphones existed. I will probably follow through with that intended task in my next blog. The reason I wanted to publish those words, written maybe two decades ago, is because I think I was practicing for my first book. Or maybe it was just to capture a moment I had since forgotten. However, I was happy with what I had written so long ago, found because my life has changed so much recently. So that story will be written next time… because memories got in my way.
My first book, The Power of Dadhood, was a huge effort for me, and very successful for an unknown, first-time author. As a technical guy—a pilot, then an engineer, I didn’t know how to write at all. But I wanted to put on paper what I learned as a kid with a mostly absent father, and as a father myself. Because Kathy worked with parents and their children as a parent educator, she taught me so much, especially how important the connection is between parent and child in their first three years.
It’s been over twenty years since I began The Power of Dadhood, and seven years since it was published. My memoir, with a working title of The Vagabonds: A Memoir of Father Hunger, is the story of why I wrote my first book. Currently, my final manuscript is being edited.
When I sat down to write, what you see here was not what was intended. It’s too early to push my memoir, likely months away from publishing. What I was going to write was a small moment I had documented quickly in those small memoranda pads I kept with me before smartphones existed. I will probably follow through with that intended task in my next blog. The reason I wanted to publish those words, written maybe two decades ago, is because I think I was practicing for my first book. Or maybe it was just to capture a moment I had since forgotten. However, I was happy with what I had written so long ago, found because my life has changed so much recently. So that story will be written next time… because memories got in my way.
