Before the storm, there is calmness that we as humans fail to realize the shift.
In Call Me Mom, Dr. Christopher King recounts a childhood moment so quiet, yet so seismic, it marks the end of innocence and the beginning of awareness. One afternoon, like countless before, he walked through the front door of his family home—only this time, the silence wasn’t ordinary. The living room furniture was gone. The pull-out couch—his evening hangout and maybe his Saturday morning cartoon throne—was gone too.
As a child, the absence of furniture is unsettling. But what lingers longer than the missing objects is the hollow echo they leave behind. Dr. King doesn’t dramatize it. In fact, he admits he didn’t fully understand what was happening. He waited, like any kid would, for his parents to come home and explain. But only one parent walked through the door that evening. His father never returned.
This moment—simple in its retelling—is monumental in meaning. A child’s unspoken awareness surfaces: something big is happening, not with thunder, but with a whisper. In the hours and days that followed, Dr. King would quietly piece together a new reality. His father had moved out. His home was no longer his home. His elementary school, friends, and routine were stripped away—not with malice, but as collateral of something adults would struggle to explain.
The brilliance of this passage is how it captures the emotional intelligence children possess, even when they lack the words to articulate it. There is a gut-level recognition in Dr. King’s memory: he knew something had shifted. The change didn’t come with a slammed door or a screaming match—it arrived with a missing sofa.
In Call Me Mom, Dr. King doesn’t simply tell us his story—he shows us how children absorb loss and transformation. His father, at first, remained physically present on Sundays. He still looked like Dad, talked like Dad. But underneath, something else stirred. A struggle with identity. A redefinition of self. The father he knew was still there, and yet, not fully.
The book reveals how the author, even in his youth, could feel this slow unravelling before the words “divorce” or “transition” ever came into play. Dr. King’s storytelling proves that children live in the emotional atmosphere of their homes—and even if they don’t grasp the complexity, they register the change.
As his father grappled with who he believed he was—hinting at a deeper transformation yet to be fully explained—the author was already living in the aftermath. That first moment of uncertainty was a signal. Life, as he had known it, had shifted. And from that day forward, nothing would be the same again.
If you wish to know more about what would have happened next in Dr. Christopher King’s life, then you need to read this book, “Call Me Mom”, from the lens of a son.
