Now in paperback!

A Dad memoir for those who didn’t have a father

The bookstore shelves are packed tightly these days with memoirs of troubled celebrities who have felt the need to share how it is they overcame whatever it is they needed to overcome, and most of these books are annoying. But occasionally there comes along a public disclosure of closure that serves a purpose.

That is the case with Kevin Sweeney’s book. Sweeney is a political operative and activist, most notably an aide in the Clinton administration who at times appeared on “Nightline” and Larry King, which makes him a celebrity even if you have never heard of him. He gives us here the memoir of a boy in a small California town, informed as a toddler that his father has died.

How best to grow up fatherless? Find some other fathers, of course.

He finds three in the neighborhood and adopts them without ever telling them. The three men know him as a kid they see around a lot. They do not know that he is learning from them, and taking comfort from them, precisely as he would have from the man he remembers as “daddy.”

The book takes us through Sweeney’s coming of age, which, like most comings of age, is filled with minor crises and major yearnings. It is a decent enough read on its own, but is better approached as a how-to book, on several levels. An older boy without a father might read it for consolation and the notion that he might find other fathers in his neighborhood if he seeks them out. A single mother might find guidance here, as well, as she wonders each day what is on her fatherless son’s mind.

Or do some of you grown men out there ever wonder about that kid without a father who is always hanging around? Maybe he is doing more than hanging around.
“Laugh at the bad jokes,” Sweeney writes, “and tell some that you remember from fourth grade; ask about their batting stance and whether it changes with two strikes. ... Look them in the eye when you ask how they’re doing.”

Pay attention. It is useful advice for any father in a book that teaches the lesson all fathers should stop each day to remember: “You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to show up.”

Zay N. Smith
June 2003