Has the Rain a Father? ...Job 38:28
I am a teacher. This is my school. I love what I have worked so hard to create here, and here I have found the greatest peace I have ever known.
In my lifetime on this earth, I have been many things. A scientist, and a scholar, and a diplomat. A politician of sorts, and a philosopher. I have been an able-bodied soldier and an invalid, and in each of those parts I have forged another piece of myself. But there is one of humanity’s great roles that has never been mine to play.
He has no children. A classic question to pose to a classful of eager literature students. To whom does that famous statement refer?
I like to think of my students as a family, as myself in loco parentis. There are a very few for whom that seems more than just an idle notion. Some who have become close to me, through the years, those whose own parents are no longer there, or those who have been rejected once their disparity from the rest of humankind became apparent. I have thought of those students, with unwarranted conceit perhaps, as some of my greatest successes as a teacher and a mentor.
Perhaps that is my great vanity.
He has no children. One of the great mysteries of Shakespeare. Does Macduff mean to speak of Malcolm or of Macbeth? If he means Malcolm, he is saying that the younger man does not understand his grief, because one must have a child to understand the loss of one. If he means Macbeth, he means he cannot truly take revenge because there is nothing he can take from Macbeth that will equal his own loss.
Perhaps Macduff was altogether wrong. For I fear that loss. I fear it when I send my students, my family if you will, out into a world that does not understand them. I fear it when I watch them take on governments and academicians and political forces that do not accept them, and never more so when violence seems to threaten us all. But I fear it as well when I worry that such outward matters have stolen their ability to fulfill their potential as human beings. For whatever their abilities, some things are common to us all. We need love, and safety, and trust in ourselves and in our friends.
He has no children. I have read the play a thousand times; I have seen great actors speak the words. I do not know what the Bard intended by them.
If Jean and Scott were my own, flesh of my flesh, I could not love them more. But I could do nothing as I watched their marriage fall apart. I tried to offer help, to give them words of wisdom. All in vain. I lost Scott and would have, I believe, lost Jean as well, had she not felt it her duty to stay. She still comes and takes tea with me, but she is a woman grown, and her unhappiness is not something she shares with me now. For I am not her father. Would a father know what to say to her? Ought I to know? If so, I have failed her.
And now there is another I may have failed.
Rogue is not the same as Jean or Scott was to me. She came later; she did not live here during her childhood. She asks for nothing from me, and after her troubled arrival, seems to have settled into a calm and productive life within the limits of her strange and dangerous mutation.
I wish I knew more of her. I am afraid that all my experience has not taught me the secret of talking to young women, particularly those who have little trust in men. From a very early point, Rogue exploited that weakness in me. She knew I would not push her to share what she wished to keep secret, but I have always hoped that she would find a confidante someday. I knew it was unlikely that she would ever come to trust in me, but I still hope that someday she might.
She does not come to me, but the fear I have for her is that she has come to believe that her limitations are all that defines her. I have tried to speak with her, and been turned away with quiet, steady words. She has few friends, though those she has are loyal and protective of her, and even with them she appears to be reserved. But I see the artwork she creates, and there is such passion in it that I cannot help but wonder: where does she keep that passion when she cannot pass it through a brush or a pen?
He has no children. I do not know if Rogue’s gifts can bring her what she needs to satisfy that fervor I know she has within herself. If she were my child, I might better understand. I might know, from the child that she was, enough about the woman she has become to comprehend what it is she needs. She is alone among many, isolated in the throng. She seems to have accepted that touch is something she cannot give, and giving none, accepts none in return.
I am not her father. If I were—at least there would have been a time I held her as a baby in my arms, a time I meant life and food and love to her, and perhaps that would be enough for her to trust me now. But I am not. I am only an old man, and physically frail. I am tired, and perhaps fearful of shadows. I know there is nothing I have not offered, that I have the right to offer, that she would accept from me any more than from any other.
Well. Perhaps one other. But that was long ago and better left alone. Perhaps.
No. I have no children.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
One might wonder what Charles Xavier makes of the situation. Since none of us is a telepath, he'd better tell us himself. Apologies in advance for the English Lit lecture.
Chapter End Notes:
Yes, as those of you who follow my stuff may be aware, I do have a bit of a Shakespearean fixation. A little footnote: After I wrote this chapter, actually long after, I had the pleasure of seeing Patrick Stewart play the Scottish King onstage.
It was as glorious as I'd expected. The guy can act a little. :)
It was as glorious as I'd expected. The guy can act a little. :)