Gabino Iglesias reviews this charming book from an author who has been “there and back again.”
From the outside, fatherhood can sometimes appear to be a somewhat standardized, monolithic experience. There are plenty of books, videos, magazine articles, and a lot of “common knowledge” going around, so the situation should be easily manageable, right? Wrong. From the inside, fatherhood is a perennially morphing trial by fire that’s the most amazing, painful, weird, scary, rewarding, multilayered experience imaginable. In a way, that contrasting plurality makes encompassing the experience in written form an impossible task. However, Ben Tanzer’s Lost in Space: A Father’s Journey There and Back Again, a collection of essays on parenthood, comes very close to doing exactly that.
Tanzer is a very talented author who was built a reputation as an outstanding voice in independent literature. However, the beauty of Lost in Space comes from the fact that the author abandoned all pretensions and opted to share many aspects of his life as a father of two sons using only heartfelt writing and brutal honesty. There are no attempts at looking like a hero, seeming perfect or pretending to teach others how things should be done. Instead, the writing here offers pain, humor, and proof that parents face unique situations within the context of something that’s incredibly universal.
The 24 essays in the collection are all about the same thing and yet each one is very different because, while they are all written in Tanzer’s voice, the tone changes drastically from one essay to the next. The topics covered by Tanzer range from struggling with a child with colic that will not sleep and discussing the movies he thinks his children need to watch to escaping to Italy to find himself before becoming a father and trying to understand the transition between being a son and becoming a father while dealing with the pain of losing his father. Every essay is very personal and the result is a special and very engaging look at the ups and downs of fatherhood.
One of the elements that makes Lost in Space a recommended read is the candor with which Tanzer discusses his feelings and, in some instances, his actions. When one of his sons needs surgery, there is crippling fear; when the other has to take speech therapy, there’s a powerful guilt wrapped in uncertainty that comes out of nowhere and invades both parents. Talking about the situations would have made for gripping literature, but bluntly addressing the emotions that came with each truly gives the collection great strength. Also, just like parenting, the feelings, which echo in the reader, are constantly changing, shifting, morphing into new things.
Despite the importance of feelings, sometimes actions are more important, and Tanzer delves into that as well. When you can’t sleep, your physical world is as affected as your psychological one. Likewise, every parent reaches a point in which physically punishing their kid seems like an option. It might be a touchy subject, but just like he does with being an outsider or discussing sex, the author approaches the subject with an open mind and the kind of frankness that can even make some people uncomfortable (a perfect example of an uncomfortable moment involves one of Tanzer’s sons using the word penis in public and in a very strange context).
Besides the openness displayed by the author and the scope of the essays, Lost in Space is an must-read for fathers because, more than an instruction manual or a preachy tome full of advice, it serves as a declaration of brotherhood and a very honest acceptance of ignorance and the courage that must come with it:
“Herein lies the rub, you never quite feel like you know what you’re doing when it comes to parenting, and jokes aside about the lack of training manuals, you don’t know, you listen, you guide, you try to stay engaged and be empathic. But at the end of the day as you lie in bed with your partner or the child themselves, you don’t know shit, and you can’t do anything to quite shake that feeling. The only thing you can truly do is decide whether you’re in or you’re out, and if you’re in, you need to buckle-up.”
That straightforwardness permeates the collection, and in Tanzer’s capable hands, becomes a force that drives the essays forward and forces the reader to keep turning the pages even when something scary or awful appears to be just around the corner.
Lost in Space brings together fear, humor, guilt, pride, worry, beauty, exhaustion, hope, and a lot of love to present an interesting look at fatherhood. It also allows the reader to witness Tanzer’s very personal reflection on how the experience changed him. Ultimately, the best thing the tome accomplishes is making veteran parents chuckle in recognition and letting new ones know they are not supposed to be perfect and everything will be okay.