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| Hephaestus |
The other day we were sitting in the Community Bookstore for
a book reading. The author of the graphic novel in question was teaching the kids to
draw pictures of the the god Apollo. Sitting on my lap, number two asked the author if he had any plans
to write a graphic novel about Hephaestus, her favorite Olympian god. The room was filled with kids, drawing,
asking questions, and making observations about this quirky extended family of
gods. Most of us are drawn to these
stories because we see a piece of ourselves in these stories of sibling
rivalries, adultery, jealousy, and redemption.
Zeus the father of the bunch famously hurled Hephaestus during a spat in
which the boy sided with his mother, Hera, injuring the eventual of craft and
metalwork. Throughout his life, he learned
to cope with his injury, becoming an artist. Rather than the
linear, polished, albeit mean spirited Apollo, number two is drawn to
Hephaestus’ story of exile and return, resilience and repair.
The whole weekend felt like that. We attended a funeral on
Saturday for a husband of Caroline’s mom, who she knew a half century
prior, bringing her mother out of the wreckage of post war Europe back to the US. Once back here, she went her own way, leaving
her son and father to cope. This son
stood to tell this story on Saturday. Yet,
unlike most eulogies, this one felt honest.
We all listening spellbound as he talked about the sweetness and the
sour of five decades of knowing his father, reeling through time, between wars,
connections and separations, running away from trouble in the Lower East Side
in the 1970’s to reconnect with his father, only to be exiled anew after a
short year or two. They did not talk much for two decades. And then letters started. And a correspondence grew. The two traveled and forgave each other, lost
each other, and found something else. Decade by decade he talked, comparing his
misconnections with his father to the story of the Prodigal Son, who
reconnected with his father after a similar exile and was embraced anew, his life and narrative overlapping with biblical tale.
Looking at him, I felt incredibly moved, this son exiled and
injured, who made a life for himself like Hephaestus. Hopefully, we can all find the kind of
acceptance he once found. Sometimes
that’s all we need. Looking at kids growing, its what I thought about all weekend.
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