Chap­ter 25 of If These Wings Could Fly explores the narrator’s reflec­tions on the com­plex­i­ties of fam­i­ly dynam­ics, espe­cial­ly the emo­tion­al tur­moil that aris­es from a father’s unpre­dictable out­bursts. The open­ing of the chap­ter presents a metaphor that com­pares the house to a healed bone—once bro­ken but now mend­ed, though still bear­ing the scars of its past. This pow­er­ful metaphor sets the tone for the nar­ra­tor’s jour­ney of grap­pling with her family’s dys­func­tion, where the emo­tion­al scars of their past, par­tic­u­lar­ly the father’s out­bursts, are still very much present in their dai­ly lives. The house, like the narrator’s heart, has been patched up, yet the dam­age still lingers, man­i­fest­ing in ways both seen and unseen.

The nar­ra­tor then recalls a trau­mat­ic snow day from her child­hood, when she was only eight years old. On this par­tic­u­lar day, her moth­er, who was preg­nant with Juniper, had to leave for work, and her father, weary from his labor, faced the bur­den of an over­flow­ing trash bin that had been ignored for far too long. His frus­tra­tion boiled over when he saw the mess, trig­ger­ing an explo­sive out­burst of anger. He vio­lent­ly threw the trash and, in his rage, broke a cab­i­net door. The inten­si­ty of the scene deeply impact­ed the nar­ra­tor and her broth­er, Camp­bell, so much so that they sought refuge by hid­ing in a clos­et, ter­ri­fied by their father’s unpre­dictable wrath. This moment rep­re­sents the emo­tion­al chaos that often accom­pa­nies liv­ing with an unpre­dictable and angry par­ent, where safe­ty and peace seem for­ev­er out of reach.

As their moth­er even­tu­al­ly finds them hid­ing and brings them back to the scene of the destruc­tion, the once shat­tered cab­i­net door appears sur­pris­ing­ly intact, chal­leng­ing the narrator’s mem­o­ry of the event. This dis­crep­an­cy leads the nar­ra­tor to ques­tion her own per­cep­tion of real­i­ty, a con­fus­ing and unset­tling expe­ri­ence for a young child try­ing to make sense of a volatile envi­ron­ment. In a qui­et moment, Campbell’s soft whis­per of “mag­ic” pro­vides an odd com­fort, as it hints at a shared acknowl­edg­ment of the bizarre nature of their expe­ri­ences. Their recog­ni­tion of the sur­re­al, the incon­sis­ten­cy between what they saw and what was pre­sent­ed, becomes a cop­ing mech­a­nism in their attempt to make sense of the chaos around them. It reveals how chil­dren are often forced to cre­ate their own expla­na­tions for the inex­plic­a­ble events in their lives, using fan­ta­sy and won­der to shield them­selves from the painful truth.

As time pass­es, the nar­ra­tor observes that these vio­lent out­bursts become more fre­quent, sig­nal­ing the cycli­cal nature of her father’s anger. Despite his repeat­ed promis­es that he would change, his behav­ior remains con­sis­tent, rein­forc­ing the painful real­iza­tion that the cycle will not break. She comes to under­stand that love, in this con­text, does not pre­vent the vio­lence but rather com­pli­cates the sit­u­a­tion, mak­ing it hard­er to escape. The emo­tion­al bonds formed in such an envi­ron­ment cre­ate a com­pli­cat­ed web of attach­ment that, while deeply painful, also makes leav­ing feel impos­si­ble. This cycle of abuse and emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion per­pet­u­ates a sense of entrap­ment that chil­dren often feel, believ­ing that the only way to cope with the chaos is to stay and endure, hop­ing that love might even­tu­al­ly heal the wounds.

In hind­sight, the nar­ra­tor reflects on how the phys­i­cal dam­age to their home—whether bro­ken fur­ni­ture, shat­tered win­dows, or ruined walls—was often “repaired” as if by mag­ic, leav­ing behind no trace of the vio­lence that had occurred. This “mag­i­cal” repair sym­bol­izes the denial that becomes a sur­vival mech­a­nism with­in such a house­hold, as the fam­i­ly learns to avoid con­fronting the real issues at hand. This behav­ior, shaped by fear and emo­tion­al exhaus­tion, becomes a cop­ing mech­a­nism, allow­ing the fam­i­ly to main­tain some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy despite the under­ly­ing tur­moil. The nar­ra­tor’s reflec­tions in this chap­ter encap­su­late the painful strug­gle of chil­dren try­ing to under­stand and process the dys­func­tion with­in their home. They must nav­i­gate the emo­tion­al chaos, rec­on­cile the dis­par­i­ty between their lived expe­ri­ences and what they are told is true, and learn to build emo­tion­al resilience in the face of unpre­dictable vio­lence. The chap­ter paints a vivid por­trait of the com­plex­i­ty of grow­ing up in an envi­ron­ment where love and pain are inter­twined, and where the scars of the past remain, even when the exte­ri­or seems whole.