Constrast Between Saturday Climbing and Nature Lessons

In a world fraught with single parents, how are the dads doing? In the following texts, Nature

lessons and Saturday climbing, we will follow both dad-daughter pairs and their relationship.

Both dads in the story were separated, and it will illustrate how dads interact with their

daughters in spite of their differences in sex and generation gap.

In nature lessons, Marco wanted to impart to Mary the high esteem he had to nature and how

much he valued living in the woods. He was tempted to steal her away from her bed and share

in the wonder of observing the owl. In a later part of the text where they were traveling back to

L.A, he lamented the lack of subsequent eye-catching nature as a loss of bonding between the

two. This demonstrated his parental need to impart knowledge and the wistfulness for a

stronger understanding/bond between father and daughter.

In the following text where the two were making a pizza, Marco couldn’t help but feel

patronized by his daughter following along with his activities. But when asked by Marco on

what would she tell people about her trip, she highlighted the eye-catching details, despite the

fact that some of the stories were predated to her visit. Mary had a simplistic way of answering

her father’s questions, and offhandishly ended with “Oh, I don’t know, I’ll say I was with my

dad.” while snuggling against Marco. From this you can tell that for Mary it was not about what

she did or ate up in Alaska, it was about the fact that she got to spend time with her Dad,

Marco.

In Saturday Climbing, we explore the relationship between a single dad and his daughter who

is leaving for college. Their relationship is brought together and symbolized by the art of rock

climbing. As a last ditch effort to find a common activity to engage in and worrying over her

substance use, Barry had signed up for rock climbing lessons. During a rock climbing session,

Barry thought back to a childhood story of Moira accidentally overdosing on aspirin as a child

and how it highlighted how fragile she is and how much he would miss her. It also shows that

he would also be overprotective of his little girl.