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Aug 2020
My father had his own bedroom, mother hers. That should had told me something, which it did, but I was too young to understand. As I grew up, father remained emotionally distant from me. Through grade school, I made straight A's, but he never acknowledged it.Β Β Only once did he play catch with me in the front yard. In junior high, I continued to make straight A's, was co-captain of both the football and basketball teams, and was president of the student council, but he never said a word. As a sophomore in high school. I was elected president of our class by over 800 classmates, but father remained silent. As a junior, I was admitted to Andover, the oldest and arguably the most prominent prep school in America, but all father could say to me was 'be of good cheer." I chose to attend Columbia instead of Yale and had a great four years, but father forgot to put film in the camera when he took photographs at graduation. When I dropped out of law school the first day of finals my first semester, my father was enraged, but again in silence. When I began to write poetry, he said, "Go buy a rental property." My father never congratulated me, never gave me a hug, never told me that he loved me. At times he would say mean, hurtful things to me, which still hurt today. I wrote a poem years ago in which I alluded to one of Shelley's most famous poems. My phrase was "farther away than Ozymandias." That was my father.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Written by
TOD HOWARD HAWKS  81/M/Boulder, CO
(81/M/Boulder, CO)   
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