Friday, January 16, 2009

The Distant Land of My Father

I am reading The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell.
There is a paragraph at the end of the chapter "city of angels" that resonated with me.
The protagonist, Anna is writing about how much she missed her father when she was just 7.  He was still an Shanghai, China while she and her mother had left and moved back to the US, to Los Angeles.  This paragraph is actually about a little girl missing her Daddy, but it feels like what I feel when Mr. M is drunk and I am living my life without him and picturing my future without him.  So, these are all the author's words, except where I substitute "husband" for "father" (for literary integrity, I will italicize those instances).

"I didn't just miss my husband.  I lacked him, and without him, I didn't feel myself.  I was afraid that his absence showed on me somehow, and I thought of Shanghai's beggars. My father had told me once about pain from phantom limbs, and I understood, for I, too, was a beggar now, missing not a limb or an eye or an ear, but a husband, and here in this land that was supposed to expand my soul, I no longer felt whole."

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