Powder this.

In Tobias Wolff’s “Powder” it is not so much a story about father and son sharing a day but about the dynamic between father and son. It truly is a case of loving somebody for what they are and not hating them for what they aren’t. Every action that was committed this day by the father was just another in a long line of deeds that the son just chose to accept as ‘Dad being Dad’ with the underlying motive that the father really did want the relationship to continue. The father wanting to take his son on a skiing trip before Christmas must really put on a sale job to his wife, that he has been separated from and has had custody of the son since their split. This was referenced in the second sentence of a shockingly short two sentence opening paragraph- “He’d had to fight for the privilege of my company because my mother was still angry with him...”(2). This would say to me that this was a father who had love for his son and wanted to have him in his life and show him culture. As his crime was “….for sneaking me into a nightclub during his last visit, to see Thelonius Monk.” (2) The father wasn’t just taking him and introducing him to the night club scene but to see a musician who is considered to be one of the giants of American music. A non-loving father, in a similar situation, may have stood there like a batter who had gotten the ‘take’ sign from the third base coach and let the pitch, from the wife, go by for a strike. The father had to convince her like a child pleading to a mother.
Despite the promises, and the worsening visibility due to the oncoming snow, to have the son back early the father is clearly living in the moment. “He was indifferent to my fretting.”(9) This is an interesting case of role reversal with the father conning to stay for more runs down the slope and the son being the one to despair about getting home on time. As it is usually the parent with the weight of responsibility and not the child. The son’s love for his father comes forth when he admits, “By now I couldn’t see the trail. There was no point in trying. I stuck to him like white on rice and did what he did and somehow made it to the bottom without sailing off a cliff.”(13). It really is an admission of not only love but trust and faith to follow somebody blindly not just figuratively but literally in this instance through the powder. All traces of despair, spoken and unspoken, made trivial to the experience.
Then we have a role reversal of a role reversal. The father then steps up and accepts the responsibility but not in a way that would be considered normal. There begins a “Do what I say and not what I do?” paradigm. To get you home, I’m breaking the law by going through the barricade. Don’t you do it. To get you home, I’m driving down an uplowed road of fresh powder. Don’t you do it. The father even goes as far to explain why by admitting that his son has strong points that he doesn’t have, “Easy. You always think ahead.” (34) At that the son settles in and lets “Dad be Dad” for the rest of the trip.
They made it home in time for dinner. Did the dynamics change? Only when it came to the little lessons on the ride back. The son was still more the adult and the father more like a child. The son knows what his father is “…in his 48th year, rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honor, flushed of certainty.”(39)


Work Cited
Wolff, Tobias. “Powder. An Introduction to Literature Eds. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 15th ed. New York: Longman, 2008. 18-20