Richard Ford on the joy and pain of writing about his own parents

To understand that our parents are people in their own right, with lives that extend far beyond our field of vision, is not easy.

It is tempting to see their stories as secondary to our own, and to pretend that their real lives began when we were born.

But acclaimed writer Richard Ford was a late addition to his parents' marriage. His father, Parker, was a travelling salesman. He and his wife Edna, found lodging in hotels and motels throughout Arkansas and the surrounding states. 

When baby Richard arrived in 1944, it was the beginning of a new chapter for them. But it was not the only one that mattered.

Ford's new book — his first work of nonfiction — is a remarkable portrait of his parents' lives, both with him and without him. It is also a portrait of the world that shaped them: the American South of the early and mid-20th century.

Richard Ford is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American writer. He is best-known for his books following the life of Frank Bascombe, a divorced father, struggling writer, and real estate agent in New Jersey. He is also the author of the best-selling novel Canada, and several other novels and short story collections. His new book is called Between Them: Remembering My Parents. 

The following excerpts have been edited and condensed. To hear the full interview, click 'listen' above. 

On the hardest thing about writing about your own parents

In the case of my father, he died in 1960, and a lot of time went by between his death and the time when I felt like I could write about him. And the longer the time extended, the more difficult those memories became to reclaim. So really, the difficult part was trying to write about someone who is gone. Can you write about a presence which was, in most ways, an absence? 

For my mother, who I wrote about not long after her death in 1981, the hard part about it was that I missed her so much. Writing about her brought her back to me very vividly, and it didn't allay missing her. It caused me to miss her more. 

I think in both instances, in writing about my mother and my father, it was because — I'm now 73, I was 72 when I wrote the piece about my father — I miss them both. You think that when you get to be so old, and your parents are long gone, that you're not going to miss them. But in fact, that's exactly what you do. 

On growing up "between them"

I was a late addition to their life, and when I came into their life, their life together — as a couple, two people in love — was fully formed. It was never unclear to me when I was growing up that I was not only late-coming into their lives, but that as much as they loved me, I was secondary to their lives. Who was important to them was each other, which is why I call the book Between Them. When I was born, I came between them, but also, I grew up between them. And it was also very clear to me that what was most important to them was what was between them. 

That shouldn't be a threat to a child. In fact, I always found it very consoling and freeing that they treasured each other and had had years already to treasure each other. When they decided they were going to have a child, they wanted me a lot ... but they never wanted me as much as they wanted themselves. It was a grace note in my life, not a liability. Not hard news to accept. 

On the value of celebrating his parents' ordinary lives

The fact that they were small people, that they didn't make much happen in the world except me, and to be cherishing each other — seems to me to be the case with most of our parents. I'm just lucky to be a writer so that I can say that about them, so that I can put it on paper and let other people know, when they think about their parents, that their parents' lack of celebrity, lack of moment, is not an impediment to virtue. 

On how writing about his parents helped him understand his own life

To be able to draw a continuous narrative line from my earliest days to these days is a great deal more than comforting. It makes me able to authorize my life. It makes me able to authorize myself today. In some ways, it makes me able to accept myself ... To have known the experience of thinking about my parents in this way, and thinking about myself in their context, and trying to do it in terms that are legitimate and authentic and not just conventional, is for me an act of authorship of myself. 

Click 'listen' above to hear the full interview.