A Soliloquy on Parenting

By C.R. Dupee

A Soliloquy on Parenting is not a 'how-to' on parenting but a retrospective driven by ideas and aesthetics.
The tone is reflective with a philosophical bent, written in small segments to capture the many thoughts
and feelings of parenting. It's filled with stories which have clear though anonymous references to his children.
For parenting is mostly about stories.
It's a small book that's often philosophical, using books and movies as ideas in parenting. It's both 'top-heavy' and light-hearted, and strives to create a tone that's different than the usual parenting books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098384142

Book preview

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C.R. Dupee lives with his wife and dog at a lake in Southern California. He has four children and twelve grandchildren and was a practicing pediatrician for over 50 years. A Soliloquy on Parenting is not a 'how-to' on parenting but a retrospective driven by ideas and aesthetics. The tone is reflective with a philosophical bent, written in small segments to capture the many thoughts and feelings of parenting. It's full of stories which have clear though anonymous references to his children. For parenthood he writes is mostly about stories.

A Soliloquy on Parenting

C. R. Dupee

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-09838-413-5

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-09838-414-2

© 2021. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

to

Lynette, Marc, Rochelle, and Randy

Previous Books

Opera Thoughts: A Synopsis of my Synapses 2009

Journeys into Greece: Notes from a Spiritual Captain 2018

Contents

To Begin With

Laid Back Parent

To Be

The Earliest Sounds

Bedtime Stories

Bears

Cuteness

*

The First

Ponderosa

Planned

David Hume

Octogenarians

Dogs

Red

Helmsmanship

*

Atticus

The Fit

Nature and Nurture

Baseball

Wedding, Funerals, and Operas

Don’t See It That Way

Magical Years

Siblings

Music

*

The Bard

Because I Said So

The Four L’s

Images Over Vintage Wine

Going

Turning Gray

Martha’s Creed

D-Day

*

Rearview Mirror

Words In A Pediatric Exam Room

Dialogue with Dr. Death

Getting Your Own Way on Alcatraz

Mentorship Redux

And Remember

Afterword

*

Acknowledgements

To Begin With

When you do a retrospective on parenting, especially decades later, you wonder where to begin. There is so much to think about, so many pieces. As I thought about it a swirl of images hit me, most in passing fragments, some as vivid as yesterday. What to do with these images, or rather afterimages, for so many years had passed since the originals. Putting them together was puzzling and made the beginning difficult (and the oft-quoted advice to begin at the beginning annoying). At the same time a poet I was reading said there were ‘two kinds of memories’. One that ‘sets forth large outlines, rational theses, vivid colors,’ the other having ‘little snapshots, fleeting instants, atoms of recollection.’ The first to me seemed better suited for prose, the latter for verse (not to mention the in-betweens), and I wondered if this was the path I should follow. In the midst of all this was wanting to say it a certain way. That a how-to on parenting, some childhood insight or amazing family story was not what interested me. What mattered - and I should have known this already - was aesthetics and ideas - the prism through which I viewed life. As I was writing things down I was surprised how much of what was remembered had been stored this way, that the prism through which I viewed life shaped memories too. This was a revelation and gave me a sense of where I was going. Not long afterwards the word soliloquy came somehow to mind. It seemed to capture the tone of my recollections and be a pathway through which to express them. For the word had a certain aesthetic; a feeling of days past, a dreamy, deeply held quality, the sound of it ‘soliloquy’ enigmatic yet heartfelt and serious. The word also had an intriguing idea: talking to oneself (solo, to oneself, loquor, I talk), something parents do day and night raising children and what I’d been doing recalling my parenting days. It also welcomed philosophy, a way of thinking intrinsic to me. Finally, after all the rumination I had idea for the book’s title, and the word with which to begin with.

In Elizabethan times, soliloquy had a more theatrical meaning and was used by poets to express a character’s innermost thoughts. Doing so gave it a certain credibility for they seemed spontaneous, unrehearsed, and straight from the heart. A famous example being Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be.’ Today, soliloquys are hardly used at all, the word out of style in a more prosaic, factual world. How I came to it was more about aimless ponderings than periodic encounters with the Bard. Of course with soliloquy one thinks of theater and some pretty lofty language. The standards were high. Playwrights’ gifted wordsmiths. Still, there’s a place for the word today, even with the less erudite searching his mind for a book’s beginning.

When you think of soliloquy’s meaning, not in a theatrical sense but a literal one, you realize how underappreciated it is. True, a lot of it is useless chatter (some more than others), but of all human conversation talking to oneself may be the most important. For it’s a way to say whatever’s on your mind and get listened to, a way to express yourself raw and unedited without fear of censorship or retribution, a way to solve problems and make sense of life. And a way, it should be added, to stay sane raising children. Yet it rarely gets much attention. Maybe that’s because we take it for granted, that we’re not always thrilled with the contents, or that there are things best kept private and not see the light of day. What’s important here is that talking to oneself is a way to reflect on life. For without reflection we don’t know where we’ve been; we