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Aren't You Happy for Me?

 

            It is very common for parents, even after their children have started their own lives, to try and continue to tell their children how to live their lives. They may always tell their children "you need to learn from your own mistakes-, but when it comes down to it, they want to keep their children from possibly making the same mistakes they did. In the short story "Aren't You Happy for Me?-, by Richard Bausch, Melanie's father, Jack, is not too thrilled about the idea of his young daughter marrying a much, much older man. Later in the story, we learn that he and her mother's marriage isn't going so well, and they are splitting up. So is it the idea of the older man, or the fact that he doesn't have a happy marriage himself that he is so upset with his daughter?.
             No father wants to find out that their daughter is marrying someone older than himself, but if she is happy, and it is a good, healthy relationship, it shouldn't matter. Jack doesn't seem to care about the fact that she is happy, the man loves her, and it is what she wants. She tells him time and time again that she knows what she is doing, but he continues to belittle him. He also finds out that she is pregnant. Wouldn't he rather have the father of his daughter's baby marry her? So many times, a woman gets pregnant before marriage and the man gets scared and leaves. This is one of the most exciting times of her entire life. He should be excited for her that she is going to have her own family now, and looking forward to him and his wife being grandparents. There are more positives than negatives that are going on.
             But they won't be grandparents together. We've got the fact that they are splitting up. Melanie wasn't aware of their splitting up when she hit her dad with all of this news. She is having so many wonderful things happening in her life, and him and his wife aren't going to be together to be there for her. She is comparing her new relationship with her fiancé to her parents, which hasn't gone as well as she had always thought.


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