I’m currently reading a novel by Richard Ford called Independence Day. It’s about a divorced, middle-aged former sports writer named Frank Bascombe, who is now selling real estate and is in what he calls his “Existence Period.” The story takes place over a three-day Fourth of July weekend.As the story begins, Frank sees that Paul, his 15 year-old son who lives with his mother, is going down the wrong path, but he feels like he’s failing him—and his former wife is quick to point that out. They are about to embark on a weekend trip that includes hitting as many sports halls of fame as possible and before they leave, Frank gives Paul two things—a copy of the Declaration of Independence and Self-Reliance (presumably the essay written by Ralph Waldo Emerson) and he encourages Paul to read them before they leave.
Listen to Frank’s internal lament over his seeming inability to connect with Paul: “The worst of being a parent is my fate, then: being an adult. Not owning the right language; not dreading the same dreads and contingencies and missed chances; the fate of knowing much yet having to stand like a lamppost with its lamp lit, hoping my child will see the glow and venture closer for the illumination and warmth it mutely offers.”
I suspect that nearly every decent parent in Frank’s situation, and many an aunt and uncle, feel much the same way that Frank does—completely frustrated by the fact that he or she is nearly powerless to influence this child for the better. And much like Frank did, he or she simply becomes resolved to just letting his or her light shine in hopes that the child will be attracted to it, but all the while knowing that he or she doesn’t have real connections to the things that matter most to the child.
I had to laugh about Frank giving Paul a copy of the Declaration and Self-Reliance because it sounds like something I would do, but when I see a character in a novel doing it, it seems rather absurd. But Frank has no earthly idea about the likes and dislikes of his son. Presumably (I’m only on page 84), Paul isn’t quick to tell his dad such things. So, Frank attempts to get Paul outside of himself by showing him what previous generations thought about the concept of freedom, as espoused in both the Declaration and perhaps these words from Self-Reliance:
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
I have my doubts about whether Paul read such things before they left on the trip (I’ll have to let you know). But I’m hoping that he is eventually attracted to the lamppost with its lamp lit.
