Issue Index
Full-Time Dads;
The Magazine for Caregiver Fathers
Issue 14, originally appeared in print - March 1995
A Jon Katz Bonanza (reviewed by Scott Hahn)
A novella by William Kotzwinkle
Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco.
"Johnny, my water just broke!" So begins the story of a birth, a story all of us have experienced in one manner or another. For most of us, it was a time of compressed emotion and suspense. And for most of us, there was a joyously happy ending.
Most of us also thought about how we'd respond if everything didn't go as we hoped. Sometimes those thoughts come after the delivery, as we lie in bed at night trying to fathom the changes that have suddenly occurred, but many of us worry about such things as the pregnancy progresses. It is nearly impossible to imagine the disaster of losing a child before having the chance to even hold it.
Swimmer in the Secret Sea is the story, simply told, of a man and his wife, living in rural Maine, who race off to the hospital in the middle of a winter night to usher into the world a new life. Through a series of small complications, the child dies at the moment of his birth, and the rest of the story lets us share in the anguish and confusion of the father as he plans for his son's burial.
William Kotzwinkle, author of Fan Man and the novelizaton of E.T., the Extraterrestrial, among other works, has told this tale in spare, unadorned, but superbly eloquent and poetic language. We are permitted to probe the depths of the father's emotion on our own, as he builds his son's coffin and selects a spot in the woods for his grave. There is some resolution and closure at the end, although we know that the pain of this experience will stay deeply rooted in father and mother for the rest of their lives. It is a tender tale, and a sad one, but ultimately it confirms the power of life and love to help us survive even a tragedy as great and personal as this one.
This is a small, quiet book, but it is a powerful and deeply moving story that will give pause to every father. Read this book.
by Jon Katz
Published by Bantam Books, New York.
There are probably other novelists who have written about the experiences of at-home dads, but I don't think any writer has done a better job than Jon Katz. Mr. Katz is also a regular contributor to The New Yorker and other magazines, commenting on people and issues in New York City and across the country.
Sign Off doesn't deal with the at-home dad directly, but focuses instead on the man-work-identity tangle and what happens when that web is forcibly untangled. The main character, Peter Herbert, is a high-paid executive whose television network is being taken over by a publicity-seeking business tycoon. Initially, Peter helps administer the corporate belt-tightening that includes firing many of his colleagues. But when it becomes clear that he too will be a victim, he decides to fight back, to "do some damage" on his way out the door. Peter lives out the fantasy of everyone who has been suddenly and summarily dismissed by an employer.
Much of Sign Off deals with what happens to a man when his career, the foundation of the male identity, is taken from him. During a two week leave of absence while awaiting reassignment, Peter struggles to make the transition from self-absorbed career man to caring parent and human being. When his daughter tells him how it made her feel to be cut from the soccer team, Peter asks, "You were on a soccer team?"
He thinks he sticks out as a working-age male at home or around town during the day. Another man, laid off from an airline, tells Peter: "When you're around awhile, you'll spot the others. None of us talk to each other, but of course, you can tell. . . It's like a secret fraternity-we glance and nod at each other sometimes but we never meet."
Peter worries about what will happen to their home and their lifestyle if he can't replace his high salary with an equal one. He resents his wife, who is able to spend five hours a day writing her novel while a nanny takes care of the kids.
By the end of the book, Peter still doesn't know how he will support his family, but has regained some of his lost dignity by fighting back.
By Jon Katz
Published by Doubleday
Death by Station Wagon and The Family Stalker are the first two books in a series called "A Suburban Detective Mystery." Kit Deleeuw is the Suburban Detective, operating his one-man agency out of an office in an upper middle class suburb of New York City. Most of his cases involve "deadbeat dads," "kids in trouble," and "the modern private investigator's great benefactor, galloping insurance fraud."
He handles his cases around the activities of his two children, Ben in junior high, and Emily in her last year of elementary school. He makes their lunches and gets them off to school, drops them off at lessons and attends their ball games. His wife is studying to become a psychologist, while working part-time at a mental health clinic.
In Death by Station Wagon, Kit is hired by several teenagers to investigate the deaths of two of the town's most promising kids. The mystery alone would make a good novel, but much of the book is devoted to telling the story of a man happy to have been given the opportunity to participate fully in his children's lives.
In The Family Stalker, Kit's client wants him to find out if her best friend is trying to steal and/or destroy her family. This story is about all kinds of families: perfect suburban families of four, one with an abusive stepfather, another with an alcoholic wife and mother, and many broken by divorce or damaged by infidelity.
It is evident from his written wisdom about work, families, parenting, and dads as primary caregivers that Jon Katz is proficient at all the roles a man plays. As Kit Deleeuw says, "In the couple of years since I took over a lot of the child care, I've come to see the experience of being a parent as so extraordinary and absorbing and emotional that you can't comprehend what it's like before you have a kid and can't quite recall the details afterward."
I saw myself in the experiences of Peter Herbert and Kit Deleeuw. And although I have never met him, I am sure that Jon Katz is as good a husband, father, and friend as Kit Deleeuw. I can't wait to read the next Suburban Detective mystery.
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