One of my students in a memoir workshop was a reserved veteran who wrote lecture-like essays instead of personal passages from the heart. I could feel how hard he had worked to build the invisible shell that surrounded him.
What did this feel like to you, as a child, in the moment it happened?, were the kind of comments I made on his work. When you look back now, how do you feel? Is there anything you remember that you can’t shake, like an object you were holding, or a look in someone’s eyes?
At the end of the semester he read something so different, so personal, a passage that questioned instead of lectured. He glanced up at me over the other students’ heads, uncertain and almost scared, like a boy. I held his gaze and nodded, once–Beautiful–and his eyes filled.
Like the father in this poem and the son he instinctively understood, we can protect the ones close to us from what hurts them and holds them back. Sometimes it’s other people. Sometimes it’s the walls we build around ourselves.
The Day My Father Didn’t Teach Me to Shoot, by Andre Swanepoel
they said he would.
the uncles. the neighbours.
boys at school
who already knew the difference
between a clean barrel
and a limp wrist.
they said,
you’ll see—
he’ll take you out back one day,
line up the bottle caps,
hand you the rifle
like a secret
you’re finally old enough to carry.
but the day didn’t come.
not at thirteen,
when my voice cracked
and i was still trying
to walk like him.
not at sixteen,
when the bruises on my shins
weren’t from rugby.
not even at eighteen,
when i thought maybe
he was waiting for me to ask.
sometimes,
i imagined the drawer—
the oiled cloth,
the slow pull of the rod
down the mouth
of something meant
to be passed on.
but my father wasn’t like that.
he never spoke of guns,
never asked if i wanted one.
i think he saw something in me—
not softness,
but a distance
so wide and silent
he didn’t know how to cross.
and he left it alone.
i used to picture him
handing me the keys to his bakkie,
saying:
drive like someone
who knows what’s theirs.
he never did.
and maybe that’s the gift—
to never be handed
the weight
that leaves a wound—
one you never fire.
Click here for more information about Andre Swanepoel.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter
