CAPTION: Child Neglect In New York! A Look At Fun Home

I sort of left without warning for a couple of months, and while I am truly sorry for the absence, I can’t say I regret it. A lot has been happening in my life, and it’s all been pretty tough to deal with. On the bright side — I get to write about it! What a joy!

One of the fastballs life’s thrown my way is coming to terms with the childhood neglect I’d been put through. And one of my favourite ways of coping with that, in true theatre kid fashion, is listening to Tony award winning musical Fun Home. Alison Bechdel’s biography told through deeply entrancing and woefully wonderful melodies is a story that resonates heartily with the lesbian community. Being a lesbian myself, I have to say that this musical will forever hold a special place in my heart. But the story is more than just Alison Bechdel’s Lesbian Adventures! It’s a story of a gay daughter coming to terms with her gay father’s death. We, the audience, travel across Alison’s life as she herself digs through memories trying to piece together the multifaceted man that was her father. Through this, we find out yet another thing that connects me to Alison, which is that she and her siblings ultimately suffered from childhood emotional neglect, and I’d love to talk about it.

Now, in my personal opinion, there’s evidence of neglect throughout all 27 songs on the OST, but as for right now I’m going to be talking about “Sometimes My Father Appeared to Enjoy Having Children…”, “Welcome to Our House On Maple Avenue”, “Just Had A Good Talk With Dad”, “Maps”, “Read a Book…”, “Raincoat of Love”, “Clueless in New York”, “Days and Days” and “Telephone Wire”. Which… yeah, it’s a lot. But as I said, the whole musical is dripping with neglect; these songs just happen to be gushing with it.

Sometimes My Father Appeared to Enjoy Having Children… & Welcome to Our House On Maple Avenue

Coming fresh off the heels of the incredibly moving opening number, Sometimes My Father Appeared To Enjoy Having Children… starts with Alison, our 43 year old narrator, telling us exactly that. That sometimes Bruce would appear to enjoy having these kids. She then says “the real object of his affection was his house.” We’re then shown a memory of Helen rounding up the children to clean up the house “quickly, without any shenanigans!” Helen commands the children to do various tasks, and throughout the song we’re interrupted by the lament he wants, he wants, he wants.

Having a parent like Bruce whose cares and affections go more towards their hobbies and possessions instead of you, the child, can cause you to develop a wretched disposition towards them. Personally, I remember my father always brushing me off to watch cricket. And even then, I’d be lucky to even see him in the house; most of my time as a child had been spent alone, with my imagination as company for the most part. I have to imagine that, in essence, this is how Alison and her siblings felt. (Heck, I’m proven damn right by ‘Come To The Fun Home’.) Even with the company of two siblings, witnessing your parents choose material things over you leaves you with a loneliness so specific and empty, there isn’t a single thing in the world that could fill it.

Just Had A Good Talk With Dad

This track begins with a diary entry from an Oberlin College-bound Alison from September 15th. “Just had a good talk with dad and I feel so. Much. Better.” It starts. The first time I listened to the soundtrack and heard Beth Malone deliver that specific line, I burst into tears. Dramatic, I know, but never before had I heard a representation of what it feels like to talk to an emotionally neglectful parent who (ironically, but somehow, also obviously) tries to control every part of your life. The violent, pent up rage that you’d feel after any ‘meaningful’ conversation because they aren’t giving advice to help you. How could they? They don’t know you. And they never would.

“I feel so relieved to let go of the insane idea that I’m supposed to throw myself out into the world.” Alison finishes. There’s a lot of emotional weight tied to letting go of your parents traditions, abusive or not. For Alison, and in no small part, for me, it’s liberating. It’s a step that we get to take for ourselves without the ever-judgemental stare of our fathers. And it doesn’t matter what we let go so much that we let go of it. For Alison, it was realizing that she can take college life as slowly as she needed. For me, it’s taking on responsibility and nurturing my friendships; thanks for asking. One thing my dad is a master at is cutting ties once waters get the slightest bit shaky. It’s led to me meeting so many families, so many aunties and uncles and cousins who I’d grown to love, only to never see again. I grew up thinking it was my fault, that I’d somehow chased them away, and I don’t want my possible future kids to have that hurt live within them.

Maps

Anyone else have their view of the world and their own creative work forever warped by a singular explosive moment in which their father took a harmless homework assignment and turned it into a lesson in achieving perfection over exploring your own creativity? Because Alison Bechdel surely did. Maps has to be not only one of my favourite songs from the OST, but perhaps one of my favourite songs of all time. Our narrator version of Alison comes off the heels of Child Alison’s moment with Bruce in which they finished a map for a school project together. Narrator Alison reminisces by drawing her own map of her hometown, repeating the words of her father as she does. As the song progresses, she laments on the fact that on a map, the house at which her father was born, their childhood house, and the spot where her father took his own life, she could draw a circle, and his entire life would fit inside.

But Avi-Mae, you may be wondering. ‘Maps’ is a soul wrenching song that’s excellently performed by Beth Malone, but what does it have to do with Bruce’s neglect? A wonderful question, even if you weren’t even going to ask it in the first place. But see, reader, although Maps doesn’t specifically showcase Bruce’s A+ parenting doesn’t mean it has nothing to do with Alison’s reaction to the neglect. I can say from experience that, while on one side of the coin, childhood neglect may paint a parent with a less-than-impressive brush, it also ties a child to their parent so tightly that life without them seems painful. Thankfully, my father is still alive, but oftentimes I’m forced to ponder the reality of a world where he just isn’t there. Permanently. That’s the world that Alison is living in, and it would naturally come with a slew of intense and mixed emotions. I think that Maps is essential to discuss when talking about Fun Home and childhood neglect because Maps is Alison mourning the father she never truly got to know. And now she never can.

Read a Book, Raincoat of Love & Clueless in New York (with a brief stop at Days and Days)

Slam. Crash! Here, in Read a Book, we open on Child Alison watching TV. She’s essentially escaping the pain of her real home life by losing herself in the bright and cheery sitcom life of her show. The harrowing contrast between the reality of Alison’s grim homelife, showcased stingingly well as Bruce shoves off and berates her interest in, quote, “the best show!” and the delightful world of the show Alison escapes to is hard. Something I, and I’m sure a lot of children who experienced neglect, can attest to is that escaping to fictional worlds to be wrapped up and adopted into a tight knit gang of lovable goofs was a daily hobby. (I personally took a liking to Nancy Drew, but that’s another childhood story for another time.) In Raincoat of Love, we get to see Alison lost in a heartbreakingly joyful fantasy of what she wishes her life was. She had, and even later in life has, a massive amount of love for her father, and what I think is truly tragic is that I think Bruce loves Alison just as much, but he could never bring himself to show that love. Whether it be due to the shame he carries within himself for his sexuality making it unbearable to love the people he should, whether it be the edges of the world falling away even before he decided to step in front of that truck; he just didn’t show it. And it hurt everyone for it. Even his wife who, as we see in Read a Book and her downright desolating showstopper piece Days and Days, is not spared from this neglect and abuse. With the added pressure of keeping Bruce’s secret as hidden as she can, along with the knowledge that, no matter how much he’d claimed to love her that he never did, not in the way a husband should, it causes Alison’s mother to be just as distant and cold toward her children. She pushes Alison away as a direct result of how shattered and laid bare Bruce caused her to feel. And while, yes, she did it in an attempt to shelter Alison, it didn’t make the rejection any less painful. Bruce’s neglect and his subsequent death cause so many what if’s hanging in their wake, and it leaves so many words unsaid.

Speaking of unsaid words!

Telephone Wire

Telephone Wire. There are no words to describe the total catharsis this song brings to me. Masterfully performed by Emily Skeggs as Middle Alison and Micheal Cerveris, with Beth Malone’s soulful, sorrowful, pained delivery of Middle Alison’s thoughts and Adult Alison’s regrets, we see a father and daughter brought together in, as we find out in the last haunting line, their last car ride together. With Alison coming home for the first time after her parents read her explosive coming out letter, and with the new knowledge of her father’s sexual orientation, the one thing that should have bonded the pair together actually drives Bruce farther away. Middle Alison attempts to reach out, to relate, but Bruce is wistfully lost in painful memory of his past. Adult Alison’s lamenting is truly what gives the song its gut wrenching power, though. “Say something, talk to him,” she begs her younger self. But as Middle Alison throws line after line, desperate to hook Bruce on even the littlest thing. As telephone wire after telephone wire whizzes past them on this fateful car ride, Alison realizes all too late that the olive branch was never hers to extend. “Say something, talk to me,” she wails on the tails of the song’s final verse.

Even years after her father’s death, Alison blames herself in some small part for it. For not trying hard enough to please her father, to reach out to him. But Telephone Wire shows both Alison and the audience that it was never, ever her burden to bear. Middle Alison is upbeat and eager to relate to her father as he drifts away more and more, with every telephone wire that goes past. “This is where it has to happen,” She begs her younger self. “There must be some other chances,” She bargains with herself. “There’s a moment I’m forgetting where you tell me you see me.” She mourns. For the loss of not just her father, but for the loss of what could have been; the relationship they might have formed if Bruce had come to accept himself instead, the life they could have had if he had said something, at the light.

Telephone Wire is the song that inspired me to write this whole thing. It resonates so deeply with me as a child who, time after time, has had to reach out to my father. Who’s experienced tense car rides watching those wires thread the sky just wishing I could say something. Just wishing my father would say something.

Fun Home, readers, has done so much for me in my journey of learning to cope with my childhood neglect. It’s done so much in terms of helping me accept myself in terms of sexuality and my place in my family’s dynamic, and the songs I highlighted here are just the tip of this incredibly done iceberg. I highly recommend streaming the album on your music app of choice. Maybe even look up some, ahem, slime tutorials of the musical on YouTube because there is so much thought and love put into the lighting and blocking and set pieces of the show that I didn’t even get to touch on.

I won’t be gone for three more months again, I promise. But I hope you enjoyed this return! Happy Halloween, readers; and if you’re like me and struggling to come to terms with familial neglect, you should know that coping does get easier. It takes time, it takes a hell of a lot of working through pain that seems never ending, but it does get easier.