Customer Reviews

C'mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark

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C'mon Papa was a great read.
I learned a lot about how a visually challenged person "sees" the world and how that person related to other people.

The connection between the baby and the papa is the center of the biography and I prayed the whole time that no one would get lost or injured.

The day the toddler takes her father's hand is a high point, but this book has many high points without being sappy.
Worth the time to read for sure.

Sue K.

In a way, Ryan Knighton's memoir sings a cliched tune: a father tries to re-define himself in his new role, to capture the overwhelming love he feels for his daughter and to feel contentment in being a "good enough" parent. But Knighton's journey through parenthood is uniquely challenging and impossibly treacherous because he is almost completely blind from retinis pigmentosa,

"C'mon Papa" chronicles Knighton's daughter's birth from pre-conception until Tess turns a year. Deftly blending the humourous and the heartbreaking, Knighton describes attending amniocentesis, walking the busy streets of Vancouver with Tess strapped to his chest, and fruitlessly stabbing at his daughter's face with a soother. Through it all, he remains honest and perceptive, engagingly telling his story without bravado.

C'mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark is Ryan Knighton's second memoir, written after the birth of his daughter, Tess. (I reviewed Knighton's Cockeyed: a Memoir in April.) In his latest book, Knighton writes of his experiences as a blind father raising a daughter.

C'mon Papa is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the conception, where Knighton's wife Tracy suffers a miscarriage as a result of a molar pregnancy. Tracy goes through chemotherapy and the Knightons must wait a year before trying again to conceive. The second part is about the birth and Knighton's trials with an infant. The third part deals with blind life with a two-year-old. I did not find this story as funny as Cockeyed, although it still was a book I couldn't put down. Knighton writes of his failures at diaper-changing and baby-minding. After a heavy snowfall, Knighton loses his daughter while they are playing outside and there is a sense of panic that infects the reader until they are reunited. More tales of near-disaster, or even near-death, are included. The toughest time for Knighton is trying to care for Tess while she is a baby. It gets easier for him when she is a toddler since she, even at the age of two, can walk and see and lead her father around.

Unfortunately I missed seeing Ryan at an author appearance in Toronto while I was in Halifax in early May. It would have been a pleasure to meet him; even more so now that I have read his latest memoir.