Not too long ago Ian MacKenzie, host of the Mythic Masculine, asked a question on his substack about who he should interview and what questions or topics he should address in the new year. I responded:
…I’d love more about caregiving, both mythical models of care and mythical ways to imagine masculine caregiving. I’m a (soon to be) single dad and I take care of my disabled brother full time. It’s difficult for me to offer narratives to my son that describe this value because I just don’t know of any, and it’s difficult to model this for him because it’s not valued culturally.
I’ve been revisiting some of Lewis Hyde’s work on tricksters recently, including his retelling of the Homeric hymn to Hermes, and, having not read any of them myself, am slowly reading them somewhat idly and sporadically. The ending to the Homeric Hymn to Pan (XIX) caught my attention:
And in the house she [daughter of Dryops] bare Hermes a dear son who from his birth was marvellous to look upon, with goat’s feet and two horns—a noisy, merry-laughing child. But when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard, she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left the child. Then luck-bringing Hermes received him and took him in his arms: very glad in his heart was the god. And he went quickly to the abodes of the deathless gods, carrying the son wrapped in warm skins of mountain hares, and set him down beside Zeus and showed him to the rest of the gods. Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bacchie Dionysus in especial; and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts.
Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, ed. Hugh G. Evelyn-White
I was immediately struck at what I interpret to be the tenderness and joy that Hermes had when picking up his son and that the nurse fled and abandoned the child. While it is a long way from something like a mythic vision of caregiving and fatherhood I can’t help but think there is some germ here in this brief moment—it seems unusual that there is a description of a father tenderly picking up his newborn child and proudly showing him off.