There are many parents and kids that have hard relationships. In Jerome Weidman’s “My Father Sits in the Dark,” he explains that bad communication is the main reason for why parents and kids don’t understand each other. Weidman shows this in the relationship between a dad and son in this short story and it reminded me a little of how my relationship with my dad has, at times, been hard as well because he didn’t talk to me a lot. It’s interesting that after I got older he started telling me more stories about himself and I felt as if I was finally beginning to understand him as a person.
For much of my life, I would come home and find my dad sitting in front of the television, watching sports with a beer in his hand and a neutral facial expression. I never really did not if he was really paying attention to the game on the television or not because most days he looked like he was looking at nothing. In Weidman’s “My Father Sits in the Dark,” the son’s dad does a similar thing too when he sits alone on the dark for hours alone at night. While his dad sat in an uncomfortable chair, my dad sat in his lazy-boy comfortable “dad” chair. No one else in the house got to sit in this chair except him and if he saw you sitting on it when he came home, you would have to get off of it before he chose to sit down for “dad” time. I have to be honest and say that a lot of times I had questions for my dad but by the time I went to ask him, he was already seated at his chair in his “dad-me” time so anything I said went in one ear and out the other. That is just the way it was when he was on his chair.

Even though I didn’t get to talk with him much because he was on his chair a lot of the time, at one point when I got older I decided to turn the tv off one day while he was watching it and tell him that I wanted to talk to him without the television. My dad was surprised when I did this in the same way that Weidman’s “dad” character was surprised when his son turned on the lights during his alone time in the kitchen. I remember telling my dad why he didn’t want to know what I was doing and if he knew that I’d gotten all A’s on my last 3 report cards and if he even cared. I always tried to be the best I could be so my parents would be proud of me but my dad always seemed like he didn’t care. The dad in,“My Father Sits in the Dark,” doesn’t ignore his son all the way but says “hello, son” and “goodnight son” to him. When my dad was in front of that television and with his beer in hand, he wouldn’t even hear me say “a robber is here.”

But when it comes time for the dad to answer the son’s questions in Weidman’s “ My Father Sits in the Dark,” the dad tells him “nothing” and for his son to not worry about what he does alone in the dark. That day when I told my dad I had questions for him, for the first time, he actually listened to me and we talked for over an hour. He told me that he had a lot of work to do at his job since his position had a lot of responsibilities and he was tired mentally. Also he said that sometimes he gets muscle spasms that he can only relax if he “tunes out” for a while. “It’s the natural way for my spasms to be calm so I can get through the workday, son” he told me. I asked him why he didn’t want to talk to me and get to know me since I was his son and he said that since his dad never really talked with him, he just got used to the quiet. He did tell me that if I wanted to talk with him later on all I had to do was ask him and he would do his best to make time for me.

It was really good that my dad and I had a good talk because the communication between us got better. In a similar way, the dad and son talking about why the dad doesn’t like lights in “My Father Sits in The Dark,” also helped their communication because the son got to understand that nothing was wrong with his dad. Instead, his dad just felt relaxed because in the dark he felt like he was a boy in the “darkness” of his childhood home, Austria. My dad was just repeating what his dad did to him and it was nice that after talking with him, I understood he wasn’t trying to ignore my family or me, and he did actually care about me but he didn’t know how to express it because he wasn’t expressed this with his dad. It’s just that since he was so tired he didn’t feel like making an effort but now since we make appointments with each other, I understand him a lot more. Communication is really important in my relationship with my dad and this is something that is the biggest similarity to the dad-son relationship in “My Father Sits in the Dark.”