From early childhood, Joe Bond shared his father, who ran group homes in eastern Kentucky, with dozens of boys whose young lives had been shaped by violence, exploitation, mental illness, and more. His essay about their unruly, shapeshifting family grants deep, vital humanity to troubled young men and the troubled father-figure who devoted his life to their care, without tipping over into false grace.
Dad heard about a team at a youth prison in West Virginia that was supposed to be better than us. He loaded us into the van one morning and we drove two hundred miles to play them. This was a maximum-security facility for juveniles, up in Salem. We had to be buzzed in through a thick steel door and then through another one and another, but they wouldn’t let us into the gym. We could hear someone in there screaming.
Then it was silent, and the door opened. On one end of the court, the other team was about to warm up, and on our end—where we were supposed to warm up—a kid was mopping a puddle of blood.
“Let’s get loose,” Dad told us, but we couldn’t take our eyes off that kid pushing the blood around the court.
More picks about fathers and fatherhood
I Tried to Toughen Up My Son. Things Didn’t Go as Planned.
“A trip to the Badlands with my 8-year old offered lessons in boyhood — and manhood.”
Losing My Dad in Installments
“Back then, it felt easier to say goodbye to each part of him as they left.”
The All-American Father
“I said that he’d been a wonderful father, the best I could have asked for … I both did and didn’t believe this.”
Fighting the Tree
“Maybe I wasn’t the son Dad wanted. Maybe, if he could have, he would have picked another kid, a son he could enjoy parenting.”
The Bees In My Brain
“I’d sometimes wonder if my dad had bees of his own. Little creatures that spoke to him in his native tongue, telling him he wasn’t good enough, too.”
The Kitchen Dad
“Place the oyster on a bed of ice and go to the next one. It’s possible to refine this technique to perfection. Like changing a diaper.”
