"I
felt a sensation in my chest and a tightening throat after reading the 1981
Leacock Medal winner Take My Family ...
Please! by Gary Lautens."
Because
the author was a newspaper columnist, I assumed the book would be a collection
of well written essays, and it is. But
more than that, the stories work together as a chest-warming, throat-grabbing
record of a man’s love for his children.
Lautens never uses the word “love” in this
way, and more often he grumbles about the diaper-pail misery that small
children rain down upon their parents. His affection glows out of his
description of the frustrations, anxieties, and befuddlements that are a
function of just caring so much for his kids.
Lautens
was a master of domestic humour, a genre that Will Ferguson said, in The Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour, seems
easy, but is painfully difficult.