How I Found Sweetness In My “Iron Man” Father
Developing sight and learning to look for the good
As a young girl, I prayed that God would take my father so I would never have to see him again.
Daddy was a charismatic iron and steel craftsman, salesman, and businessman who operated a thriving metal welding business that made him a fortune in 1970s Trinidad and Tobago.
Having reserved his friendliness and charisma only for his customers and by the power of attraction greater than magnets to metal, he became well-liked and respected “Bossman,” as everyone called him throughout the island.
By the mid-1970s, Daddy was the Iron Giant of his trade, respected everywhere, and stopped everywhere. As Iron Man and Steelman, he was everyone’s best friend.
Unfortunately, he was an iron and steel Bossman at home, too — as hard as the metal he torched, bent, and cut to make his iron and steel functional art. He bore the solid, cold, grayish-brownish-blackish, unbendable, unchangeable nature of metal that was an unyielding catalyst for his children’s compliance, cowering and crippling.
I envied the iron bars and steel sheets Daddy worked with. Like with his customers, he sweetly attended and cared for his metal. How he stored, protected, carried, held, touched, and…
