Familial Bonds Through Books: Nerdom With My Father

Growing up in an Irish-American town that has one of the country’s oldest bagpipe and drum associations as well as one of the country’s oldest yachting races, it was kind of hard to identify with my blackness. I’m half white, light skinned. I didn’t look black and didn’t grow up with many other black people around, so that identity was always a little vague. My dad wasn’t helping. My dad is a sort of reverse, black Superman. He’s got near mythic strength. He’s worked as a lumberjack, carpenter, and mechanic, and one of my scariest nightmares stems from watching him jack up a house all by himself so he could work on the foundation. He has skills to solve a huge variety of problems. Art By Reuben Pendarvis     All this manly vigor, yet his inside guy is as nerd as can be. He enters the portal of our front door, and out comes Clark Kent, pushing the glasses up the bridge of the nose of his soul. At home he is never without a thick paperback in hand, enchantingly emblazoned with either a dragon and mage or the medal of an order of elite spies. When we were kids he read while he sat down to dinner with us every night. (My mom worked nights so he had license to shirk adult table norms.) He read while he watched the news; while he watched football; while he watched Batman The Animated Series that allegedly my little brother was watching. Or while he sneak watched The OC that allegedly my little sister was watching. When he had run out of a book he would bundle all 3 of us …