“There’s a right way and a wrong way to quit your job.” The words passed through me like fiery nonchalance. I couldn’t help but acknowledge he might be right. If it were advice coming from someone else, anyone else, it would have made more intuitive sense to me. But this was my father speaking (albeit near the end of his life and fairly ill which automatically grants a person considerable leeway when making grandiose statements) and so I was guarded like all children are to their fathers—calloused from previous barrages of incident and accusations which have already broken the skin. So on the surface I was considering his statement casually like one might consider a suggestion on how to launder your whites to make them brighter. But deeper and in my subconscious a flame was being fueled by years of…not contempt—it certainly wasn’t that I hated my father by any stretch—rather it was being fueled by a shared history itself. We knew each other intimately, yet we remained somewhat acquaintances, like a friendly neighbor who occasionally shares a beer and his snowblower. But our relationship was inferred by kinship and I had been caught in the same juxtaposition that all children are subjected to, regardless of their particular circumstances.

Journalist

harboring
Kinship and Strangers
Black Alchemy