“‘Dad Shining’ is a terrible name for a story.,” said a certain someone.
I replied, “The Chicago Tribune must have liked it. They’re going to publish it.”
I worked on “Dad Shining” for some time, not quite knowing what the ending needed. Then it struck me:
We grow up not really understanding our parents or why they do the things they do. When we become adults, if our maturity doesn’t lend itself to that understanding then it should lead us to empathy.
We can’t possibly know our parents challenges in the same way we comprehend our own. Therefore, we must let things go, forgive, and move on. (Whatever that forgiveness means to you. Don’t be tortured by the past)
My father passed four years ago this month. The story “Dad Shining” was published two months before he passed. (For which, I’m happy.)
It’s not a story of my father, nor of me. But it is a story of a child coming to some sort of peace with himself and extending compassion to the father he never quite understood.
(A little trivia for you – the cover was taken in Virginia where Poe’s mother is buried)
Noreen Lace 
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