February 25, 2025
February Essay: In the Air Tonight
The week after the US election, I was talking to my therapist about fathers. Not my father, but fathers in general, and about the avuncular manager at the grocery store whom I’d encountered in the bread aisle with an expression of concern on his face because there had been a widespread recall. Another widespread recall, after the one not long before it that had me tossing my fancy $5 ancient grains loaf into the garbage because it might be contaminated with metal fragments, just one more thing that made it feel like the world was going to shit, like nobody normal was in charge.
“Do you know what’s going on with this?” I asked the grocery store manager, who looked up from his clipboard shaking his head, but not despairingly. It’s just a lot, managing a grocery store, even at the best of times, and these are not that. He explained that my preferred loaf was not affected by this recall, and I said I wanted to be sure. Mainly I just wanted to keep talking to him, because of the authority of his clipboard, and how he reminded me of the actor Richard Kind.
“Basically,” I told my therapist, the revelation dawning. “I wanted the grocery store manager to be my dad.”
And with that, I finally realized why, in the wake of an election that was upending the world order, I was yammering on about ancient grains and grocery stores, and I also understood the one thing I might have in common with voters who were celebrating the election result instead of mourning it.
It was all about dads, about clipboards and pressed shirts, about order and authority, and the the promise of a person (a man person) who could tell you, and even mean it, that everything was going to be all right.
(Read the rest at Substack. If you’re a long-time blog reader, I would be happy to send you a complimentary paid subscription. Drop me a line and let me know.)
