

After dinner one evening my daughter

asks, “What if I grow up to have anger

issues?” It feels like a summer night

with the warm weather newly arrived

and it’s a difficult age and especially

hard time to be nine. I remember

at that age neurotically worrying

about every disease I might possibly

have, but I never worried about

anger issues because back then

we rarely used the word “issues”

that way and I was simply concerned

if one day I might go “crazy,” which

was the word back then that covered

everything that sent a person to what

we called “the funny farm,” which didn’t

sound all that bad a place to be, because

at least you got to laugh, and I wondered

if more than anything else that’s what

made a person crazy, that ability,

that tendency, that insurmountable

predilection for laughing at the slightest

nudge of elbow or brain during even

the most serious and solemn occasions.

And my answer to my daughter is

“No, you won’t, because sometimes

there are things you need get angry about

and anger itself is not the issue.” Then

my daughter, my wife, my son, and

I go out back in this, the hour of lilacs,

to walk upon the grass, the clover,

everything that issues forth from

underneath damp ground in the noble

angry effort to reach the light.

-Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua