Reflections Of A Father's Tears

“For years, I firmly believed that when my father and I sat together to watch my most favorite movie to ever exist, The Glass Castle, and his eyes welled with tears during certain scenes, that he was reliving the regret he had once confessed… regret for the mistakes made in raising my siblings and me. I imagined each tear carried the weight of his unspoken sorrow, a deep sense of remorse for moments he wished he could rewrite. I thought he saw himself in the father's flawed tenderness and wrestled with the painful echoes of his past decisions. Yet, as time went on and I thought about it through the next few years, time had revealed that those tears held a different origin, a more profound connection. He wasn't simply weeping for the mistakes he made as a parent; he was mourning something far more personal. The scenes that stirred his heart drew him back to his own childhood… the memories of his father and his father… and the deep, unhealed wounds from his youth surrounded by them. It was the reflection of his own journey and the men in his life… the pain they and he had endured and he ultimately overcame in adulthood, that brought forth his tears. In those moments, the film became a mirror, not for his regrets as a father, though he had many, but for the resilience and suffering he had long carried and, in some ways, conquered.”

-aubs

09-20-24