D Thomas, Kraaifontein
Thank you for publishing Esther Wood’s “Growing up with a father’s wrath”, Plainsman, August 30.
I’d love to thank and salute her for sharing her very poignant and heart-wrenching childhood recollections with us, your readership.
Esther’s story shot through the harrowing tales of my life as well and elucidated the single most important aspect granted humanity. Love. More directly, a mother’s love.
As her mother, God bless her soul, mine was cut of the same cloth.
She’d always spare us the wrath of my father’s booze-induced tirades by taking us for midnight walks during school holidays on summer nights only to return to a smashed home.
We’d build it up again, as we did our lives, and pretend that nothing happened.
It eventually drove my siblings to seek new heroes, which they found in other pockets of D6. However, Esther speaks with respect and absolute love about both her parents, but the harrowing lines of paternal abuse are threaded through her writing as it is etched in our lives and carried in our souls.
I salute you, Esther. As a man and father you have given me recourse to charge my actions and reflect on how I too can become a better man.
