constructing the identity of someone posthumously is hard work, let me tell you.
everyone seems to have a slant on what their personality was like; often towards what they would have wanted that person to be, and most likely erring away from who they actually were.
i'm no exception to this. i'll openly admit it.
it doesn't help that memories are such a fragile and malleable component of life - often wrought with inaccuracies. yet still, beautiful.
i like to frame my father as having been somewhat of a feminist - in the true sense of the word - someone who advocated for principles of gender equity. i know in some ways, i may have found evidence to the contrary - though, much like scripture, isolated lines of a letter that is barely legible must be interpreted in context.
but. today i want to share a memory.
it's a bedtime story i remember hearing on more than one occasion. i think i even remember requesting it. i always pegged it as obscure b/c it contains a gruesomely depicted and crafty murder (like many of the biblical bedtime stories my father would read). but maybe this one was told with intention?
from the book of Judges, always read from his decrepit red letter NIV bible. Deborah - a badass and competent female leader overthrows the army of Sisera, with a little help from her buddy Barak, as well as another strong female Jael (pronounced Ya'el), who eliminates Mr. Sisera himself by driving a tent peg through his temple while he was taking a nap. my father would always stop at this point - not to do a classic parental explanation of contextual violence, but to explain the medical implications of this technique ("the temple is located at the weakest portion of the the skull, near the pterion, where four bones of the skull meet, thus allowing a tent peg to quickly and easily inserted all the way through the brain, destroying the necessary structures to maintain human life" - or something to that affect. don't quote me on it. i'm trying to remember nearly 20 years back).
today i wonder: did he fixate on this point to express that Jael was one smart cookie to know where to shove in that tent peg to efficiently end the life of her enemy?
and, side stepping the possible glorification of gore and murder (as a pacifist, i am by no mean advocating for nor am i fascinated by that - i do believe that life is sacred) - these were badass women! what a story to pick to read to your 4-year-old daughter. in a book full of patriarchal and borderline-misogynistic language, my father found a story that demonstrates powerful and effective female leadership, and read it to me on multiple occasions.
whether he was a feminist or not, that is something i can appreciate - and it deepens my respect for him.
there's my ramble of the day.
