CHARACTER
The Most Fun We Ever Hadby Claire Lombardo

David Sorenson

David Sorenson

Quick Facts

  • Role: Patriarch of the Sorenson family; retired family physician; emotional center of the novel
  • First appearance: 1975, in the confusing BSB building at UIC, where he first meets and quietly falls for Marilyn Sorenson
  • Key relationships: Husband to Marilyn; father to Wendy, Violet, Liza, and Grace; grandfather to Jonah Bendt
  • Signature images: The backyard ginkgo tree; a calm hand on a shoulder; the steady presence at the edge of a crowd

Who He Is

A man of quiet gravity, devotion, and careful observation, David is the family’s ballast: the steadying presence whose gentleness carries real force. His forty-year marriage with Marilyn becomes the family’s myth—an inspiring, intimidating standard that shapes how their daughters interpret love and commitment, threading through the book’s exploration of The Ideal vs. Reality of Love and Marriage. What looks effortless from the outside is, for David, a lifelong practice of attention: noticing what people need, staying when things grow loud or messy, and choosing tenderness over ego.

Personality & Traits

David’s defining strength is steadiness—an ethic of love expressed less in grand speeches than in presence, patience, and touch. He seldom pushes himself to the center of a scene; he makes other people feel seen.

  • Loving and devoted: His marriage is his North Star. At Wendy’s wedding, he slips away from the chaos to find Marilyn under the ginkgo and simply says, “I missed you.” The gesture reframes a public celebration as a private reunion, revealing where his real anchor lies.
  • Patient and gentle: He learns the textures of a household of girls—from braiding Barbie hair with a young Violet to quietly supporting Liza through pregnancy—choosing small acts over proclamations.
  • Conflict-avoidant (with costs): From his first meeting with Marilyn, he’d rather listen than interrupt—even when she mistakes him for a TA. That diffidence can become distance, especially in marriage, where he sometimes retreats into silence rather than risk friction.
  • Observant, not always interventionist: He’s clinically perceptive about others’ moods and aches but can hesitate to act, wary of imposing, even when he clearly reads distress.
  • Aimless in retirement: Without medicine’s daily structure, he drifts—cataloging quarters, fretting over the health of the ginkgo—until Jonah’s arrival gives him a renewed sense of purpose and usefulness.

Physical presence underscores these traits: tall and lean, delicately tense in youth, later silvering at the temples with a spreading bald spot “like a galaxy.” He is consistently, almost disarmingly, handsome—an aesthetic contrast to his apologetic posture.

Character Journey

David’s arc is a slow-burn evolution: from a serious, slightly anxious premed student captivated by Marilyn’s fire to a retired physician learning how to live when his vocation no longer defines him. Early loss (his mother’s death) primes him to prize constancy and domestic safety, which he tries to build as residency collides with raising four daughters. For years, he stands just outside their sisterly weather, present but sometimes peripheral, the calm at the edge of their storm. Retirement cracks that equilibrium; without the rhythms of care, he risks becoming inert, and even his near-perfect marriage registers a subtle tremor. Jonah’s arrival pulls him back into purposeful care—projects, teaching, companionship—before a heart attack forces a reckoning with fragility. The brush with mortality clarifies his values rather than changes them: he doubles down on gratitude, intimacy, and the daily habit of love.

Key Relationships

  • Marilyn Sorenson: Their love is both ardent and ordinary in the best sense—kept alive by attention, humor, and physical closeness. When conflict arises, David’s instinct to withdraw bumps against Marilyn’s intensity, but their shared language of touch and history allows them to recalibrate. The marriage functions as a living argument that ideal love is maintained, not merely found.

  • His daughters (Wendy, Violet, Liza, Grace): David offers stability rather than solutions. He doesn’t always penetrate their private sister-world, but he becomes the house’s emotional thermostat, lowering the temperature when things overheat. With Liza, the rapport is easier; with Wendy, more vigilant and protective; with Violet and Grace, he moves gently, aware of sensitivities he can’t fully fix.

  • Jonah Bendt: Jonah gives David back a craft—teaching. Their bond grows through shared projects and unshowy time, and David emerges as the most consistent father figure Jonah has known. The relationship reminds David that usefulness is love’s language, especially after retirement.

Defining Moments

Even David’s big moments are quiet on the surface and seismic underneath—choices that reveal how he loves.

  • Meeting Marilyn (1975): Standing in the BSB maze, he lets her finish an impassioned complaint before admitting he isn’t a TA.

    • Why it matters: He chooses listening over self-assertion, setting the tone for a relationship built on admiration, patience, and the pleasure he takes in her mind.

  • Wendy’s wedding (2000): Overwhelmed by the spectacle, he slips to the margins until he finds Marilyn under the ginkgo and folds into her.

    • Why it matters: The scene turns a public ritual into private refuge, proving that his marriage—not the crowd—is his compass.

  • The heart attack (2001): While diagnosing the ailing ginkgo, he collapses from a ladder, with Jonah as witness.

    • Why it matters: Mortality punctures his aura of indestructibility, re-centering the family around care and reminding David that love’s steadiness depends on fragility honestly faced.

Essential Quotes

He slipped along the fence until he came to her, and reached out an imploring hand to the small of her back. She leaned instinctively into it.
"Come with me," he said, and led her around the trunk, into the shade, where he pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair.
"Sweetheart," she said, worried. "What is it?"
He pressed his face into the crook of her neck, breathing in the faint dry warmth of her scent, lilacs and Irish Spring. "I missed you," he said into her clavicle.

This is David’s love language: proximity, touch, and a simple sentence that collapses distance. The moment reframes the wedding from performance to partnership, revealing where he draws breath.

He thought of Wendy as a toddler, when they lived in Iowa, creeping onto the porch where he and Marilyn rocked together in the rickety cedar swing, fitting herself neatly between them and murmuring, already drifting back to sleep, You’re my friends. He was nearly overcome, standing there, feeling as out-of-place as he had a quarter of a century ago, before they’d married, a chilly December night when Marilyn had lain against his chest beneath the ginkgo.

Memory braids time together—parenthood, courtship, and the ginkgo’s long witness—showing how David experiences family as layered presence. The tenderness is edged with displacement; he’s inside the love and slightly outside the scene, a signature David tension.

"I liked listening to you talk," he said. He must have seen the indignant look on her face because he colored. "I didn’t mean your voice. Though—I mean, your voice is nice too. I’m not being—you know, some sort of creep. I meant I like the way you structure your sentences. There’s something musical about it. I’ve never really noticed that in another person before."

David’s attraction is intellectual before it is anything else—he loves Marilyn’s mind and cadence. The self-conscious backpedaling underscores his gentleness and the adolescent anxiety that never quite leaves him.

"We were doing what we were supposed to," he said gently. "We were living our lives. Doing our jobs. Raising four children."
She was quiet for a long time. "Do you ever think that we didn’t focus on them enough?" Her body was tense beneath his arm. "Were we focusing too hard on each other?"
"No," he said, disagreeing with both statements.

This exchange distills their marriage ethic: refuse false guilt, honor the life they built, and trust that loving each other enriched—not eclipsed—their parenting. David’s “No” is small, firm, and worldview-defining.