A Tragic Symmetry: Coming of Age and Coming to Terms

The following essay appears as Chapter 39 in Coming of Age, Coming to Terms, the companion guide to The Wake of Expectations and A Pleasant Fiction.

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Note: This essay discusses the thematic arc and emotional evolution across The Wake of Expectations and A Pleasant Fiction. While it does not spoil specific plot events, it may reveal how the two books mirror and deepen each other. If you prefer to experience these insights organically, consider returning after reading both novels.

The tragic symmetry Calvin describes in A Pleasant Fiction—the parallel processes of children growing up and parents passing away—emerges as one of the novel’s most profound and haunting themes. It is a symmetry that becomes clear only with time, with distance, and with loss. The Wake of Expectations is steeped in the familiar arc of growing up, with all its messy enthusiasm and quiet heartbreaks: the push for independence, the thrill of new experiences, the gradual realization that the safety of childhood is slipping away. But in A Pleasant Fiction, that arc curves back around, revealing its mirrored counterpart. What begins as a story of leaving the nest becomes a story about dismantling the nest, piece by piece.

Calvin, now in his fifties, finds himself sorting through his parents’ belongings, packing away their lives as if closing up a house that no longer belongs to anyone. It’s a task both practical and existential. And as he reflects on the boxes, the letters, the objects that once seemed permanent but now only collect dust, he comes to a deeper understanding of what it means to grow up. In The Wake of Expectations, coming of age meant taking flight. But in A Pleasant Fiction, maturity is redefined: not as escape or ambition, but as the ability to stand still long enough to say goodbye.

This dual movement—children stepping into the world, and then later letting go of the people who first guided them through it—is what Calvin calls “the system.” It’s baked into the human experience. Parents raise children knowing they will have to release them. And children, in turn, are left with the inevitable knowledge that they, too, will have to release their parents—not into the world, but from it. This is the generational relay, and the baton is not passed in a moment of triumph, but often in a moment of unbearable silence.

What gives this metaphor its resonance is that it contains both necessity and sorrow. In one light, the passing of the baton is noble, even beautiful—a sign that the next generation is ready to take on the burdens of care, legacy, and memory. In another, it’s cruel. The people who once tucked us in, who shaped our view of the world, are no longer there to reassure us. And yet, this is the system Calvin comes to accept, not with resignation, but with something closer to reverence. The cycle endures not in spite of our grief, but because of it.

In The Wake of Expectations, Calvin’s parents are present as touchstones—imperfect, opinionated, but alive. His father is a man of convictions, often frustrating, sometimes foolish, but deeply rooted in concern for Calvin’s future. His mother, idealistic and occasionally oblivious, remains the emotional backbone of the family, particularly in her tireless care for Jared. In the first novel, Calvin pushes against them, as children must. He wants to be seen, heard, understood on his own terms. He resents their fears, their limitations, their inability to grasp who he is trying to become.

But in A Pleasant Fiction, the balance has shifted. Calvin is no longer the one asking to be understood—he is the one left behind. He must now understand them. And he does. As he moves through the house, through their letters and secrets, he comes to see not only what they gave him, but what they withheld to protect him. Their flaws don’t disappear, but they are placed in a wider frame. Their lives—once the backdrop to his own—become the subject. And Calvin, the narrator of his own story, is now their witness.

The emotional symmetry between these two roles—being let go, and doing the letting go—is what gives A Pleasant Fiction its weight. Calvin, who once viewed independence as escape, now sees it as responsibility. The story is no longer about how far he can get from his childhood, but about what he will carry forward from it. And in that sense, the novels are not separate stories, but two halves of a single arc: coming of age, and coming to terms.

The companion guide’s title, Coming of Age, Coming to Terms, crystallizes this arc. The first phrase speaks to the headlong rush of youth, the second to the long, slow reckoning of age. Calvin doesn’t just pass through these stages; he absorbs them. He is not the same person in A Pleasant Fiction that he was in The Wake of Expectations, but the earlier version of him is still there—naïve, hopeful, stubborn—and that version needed to exist in order for the later one to emerge. Time doesn't erase who we were; it layers us. Every experience—every kiss, every fight, every loss—becomes sediment in the bedrock of who we become.

The most tragic element of this symmetry is that it is invisible until it's almost complete. Children rarely see the process of growing up as a letting go. And adults, even those caring for aging parents, are often too caught in the logistics of decline to register that they are living the inverse of their own coming-of-age story. But Calvin sees it. He names it. And in doing so, he gives voice to something universally felt but rarely spoken: that growing up is only half the story. The other half is letting go.

What gives A Pleasant Fiction its emotional power is not just the accumulation of grief, but the way that grief reorients everything that came before. In the space left by his parents’ absence, Calvin finds a new vantage point from which to look back on his life. The conflicts that once seemed so urgent now feel like echoes. The betrayals that once cut deep now register as misunderstandings. And the love that was always there—sometimes hidden, sometimes clumsy—now glows like an ember that refuses to go out.

In the end, Calvin doesn’t transcend grief. He carries it. And in carrying it, he becomes the adult he once needed—someone capable not only of letting go, but of remembering. Of holding onto the good, even when it hurts. Of taking the baton, and running with it, even when he’s not sure where the finish line is.

This is the legacy of A Pleasant Fiction. It reframes The Wake of Expectations not as a story of youthful experimentation, but as the necessary first act of a longer, deeper story about continuity, memory, and the cost of love. It asks readers not just to remember what it was like to be young, but to consider what it means to grow old—and to do so with grace, even in the face of heartbreak.

Because in the end, the tragic symmetry Calvin identifies is also a kind of gift. It reminds us that loss and growth are never separate. They are reflections of each other. And the baton, once passed, does not vanish. It is carried. It is honored. It endures.

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