My Father, the Poem. Myself, the Footnote. - Essay¶
Overview¶
"My Father, the Poem. Myself, the Footnote." is a personal essay by Catherine (Katie) Hargreaves, published in an independent neurodivergent anthology when she was twenty-four years old. The essay explores Katie's experience growing up as the daughter of Alastair Hargreaves—an autistic literature professor—and her journey toward recognizing her own autism after years of masking and passing.
The piece became an early example of Katie's writing voice: pointed, affectionate, deeply personal, and unflinching in its examination of neurodivergent family dynamics.
Content and Themes¶
The essay opens with Katie discovering a love note her father wrote to her mother, tucked inside a book of Yeats with a spine-cracked and underlined, ink bleeding where a teacup had kissed the margin. She describes this as emblematic of who her father is: "The kind who writes like breathing and forgets he's left pieces of himself behind."
Katie reflects on growing up without realizing her father was autistic—only knowing that some days he disappeared into stillness, that certain fabrics made him wince, that the house went quiet after his lectures "like the ache after a violin's last note." She didn't know the word "meltdown," only that if the light was too bright or someone raised their voice, his hands would tremble as he excused himself to lie down.
The essay then turns to Katie's own experience. As the girl twin who spoke early, who didn't cry in loud rooms, who could mimic her sister Charlotte's radiance, Katie learned to pass. She could fake eye contact and laugh at the right time. But she knew what it meant to come home from school and lie under a weighted blanket for an hour before she could speak again, to draft emails ten times because her tone might be misread, to feel invisible in a room full of noise.
The turning point came at sixteen when she asked her father if his brain ever felt "like a browser with a hundred tabs open." He smiled softly and said, "Only on days that end in y." That's when it clicked.
Katie writes that diagnosis didn't change or "fix" her, but it named her—gave her a thread to pull back through the tapestry of her childhood and say: "here. Look. You existed the whole time."
The essay concludes with Katie's declaration of purpose as a writer: "I write for the footnotes. The quiet ones. The coded ones. The girls with clipboards and fidget rings. The ones who cry in bathrooms between classes. The ones who write their fathers poems but call them essays. Because maybe I am my father's daughter, after all. Maybe poetry lives in footnotes, too."
Significance¶
The essay established Katie's voice in neurodivergent advocacy spaces and marked her transition from journalism toward creative nonfiction and memoir. Her ability to write about family, disability, love, and quiet grief with both tenderness and edge attracted readers who saw their own experiences reflected in her words.
The piece also provided rare insight into the experience of growing up with an autistic parent while being neurodivergent oneself—the way recognition can be delayed by gendered expectations, by the pressure to pass, by the assumption that girls who speak early and mimic well must be neurotypical.
Katie would eventually build her writing into a full platform for neurodivergent advocacy, but this essay represented the first time she publicly claimed her identity as her father's daughter in more than just name.
Related Entries¶
Related Entries: Katie Hargreaves – Biography; Alastair Hargreaves – Biography; Charlotte Hargreaves – Biography; Siobhan Hargreaves – Biography; Hargreaves Family – Family Tree