My Daughter Has Filled My House with Onions
It's all there in the title
Our firstborn, a jocund sol of grins and mischief who is bound to be somewhere ping-ponging off the various walls that surround her (not in my office as far as I can tell), is going to celebrate her first birthday in two weeks. People have begun using this occasion to ask me with increasing frequency how I feel about fatherhood and what I’ve learned about fatherhood, etc.; questions that all parties involved know I do not have real answers to, but are asked nonetheless because, like so many things, they pass the time in an agreeable fashion.
I really don’t have any insights into fatherhood, I mean that. But I am dogged by a persistent fable that has helped me couch my understanding of what our daughter has brought into our lives, and what’s required of me as the paterfamilias to facilitate her presence. It’s a short, small thing, but I like it, so I’m going to share it.
In his book The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky includes a story called the Parable of the Onion. I’m going to tell it as it was told to me, Brothers K is on my reading list for the summer. It goes thus:
One time, there was a mean old lady who died. She had no friends, no family, and no warmth or caring for anyone in the world. Full of spite and sin, she went to hell. Aggrieved, her guardian angel went to God to ask for His help. “Lord, my charge has died and gone to hell. Is there anything I can do to save her?”
God replied, “Was there anything she ever did for another person out of the kindness of her heart?”
The angel thought for a moment before dejectedly offering, “Well, one time she gave a poor person an onion.”
God ignored the angel’s resigned tone and immediately said, “Very well. Use the onion to save her.”
So, the angel retrieved the onion and flew down into the pit where the legions were suffering, bound in chains. It found the old woman there and held the onion out to her. “Grab on. We’re leaving.”
Bewildered, the old woman grasped the onion and as soon as she did so, her chains were instantly lightened, and she began to rise up. When she did, the people around her noticed and grabbed onto her legs and feet, and by their touch, their chains were instantly lightened and they began to rise up as well. She looked around, further confused and panicked, trying to wriggle away from the hangers on.
“Stop!” The angel shouted. “Don’t look at them. Hold fast to the onion. We are leaving!”
The woman did as she was told and began to rise up further out of the pit, and as she did so, more and more people began to grab onto her, and onto the people who touched her, and soon there was a massive chain of souls all being taken together out of the pit. The woman looked down to behold them, and seeing the mass of people clasping her, began to kick them off and scream, “No! No!”
In doing this, she lost her grip on the onion and fell back into the pit, and the angel, weeping, withdrew.
It’s a heavy parable, one that contains a multitude of things to discuss poetically, thematically, theologically, etc. and perhaps we’ll revisit it in the future, but right now the idea I want to focus on is in the onion itself.
The onion in the parable represents a tiny, almost thoughtless act of kindness, but in God’s employ we see how powerful it truly is. Theoretically, if the chain had never been broken, it could have taken everyone out of the pit. That’s the magnitude of God’s mercy. Even He tells us it only takes as much as a mustard seed, much less an onion.
So when people ask me about being a dad now and what it’s like, all I can really tell them is that now I see onions everywhere, and it THRILLS me. They are in the unwashed bottles in the sink, in the toys that need to be cleaned up, in the laundry that needs to be put away, in the plugs that need to be covered, in the shelves that need to be secured, in the groceries that need to be bought, in the blue lines on her diapers (and it’s here that my wife will now utter a polite scoff if she’s reading this).
My daughter has filled my house with onions. There is now no shortage of small but eminently helpful things for me to do that either take care of her or reduce the burdens on my wife. I am never in want of contributing something that may inconvenience or bore me, but nevertheless brings order and harmony to my household. And again, it is thrilling.
Now, I don’t think that marriage and parenthood is right for everyone, or that marriage and parenthood are necessary to be saved, or… what have you. But, I say pointing at myself, most of us need the help. When I was alone, I never saw onions. I was not a reliable or even frequent source of kindness or sacrifice to anyone. I was a ball of anxiety forever trying to chart the path of my own amusement- what art I needed to consume, what political matter I needed to stay abreast of, what ways to pass the time in an agreeable fashion. Some of those things were good, edifying, etc. But they weren’t going to save me. They didn’t bind me to anyone. I had no responsibilities because I was blind to the onions around me.
Now, my daughter has shed her light on them. Thank God for her.
May our Lord illuminate the righteous path He has laid before each of us and compel us to walk it dutifully and with joy.