In just a few words, Whitman was able to get the essence of it. Not of America, not of the body and soul, or the natural world, as he so expertly and often did in his poems. No, it was his father he was speaking of, but really a generation of fathers, in fact, a type of father that continues to this day.

“The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust;

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure.”

Maybe that’s your father. Maybe, maybe there’s flashes of you in there too. ​It’s the father in Adam Hochschild’s book​ ​Half the Way Home​. ​It’s Springsteen’s dad​. ​It’s Ted Williams​, as captured in Wright Thompson’s incredible chapter in his amazing book ​The Cost of These Dreams​. ​It’s Lincoln’s father​. It’s way too many people’s fathers.

It’s the kind of parent that haunts a child, that haunts them into adulthood. The one whose approval they never got, whose moods they feared, whose affection they still crave. It’s the one that kids flee, move away from, who they don’t want to come home to see for the holiday’s.

It’s also the one you can’t afford to be.