Memoir Essay

One assignment was to write an essay in a memoir style. I didn't think this piece was all that great, but I love the subject matter to death. I really did write this on January 14th, after really just leaving a voicemail on his phone. The details might be slightly embellished (like I don't really remember sweating while picking up grass clippings when I was 4 or 5, or being particularly desperate to move into our new house) but it was a way to illustrate the lessons, which are very real. I also know my dad is 61, but 60 sounded like a better milestone for the story.

I have heard the theory that fathers fight less with their teenage daughters than they do with their teenage sons. The logic of the claim seems sound, citing that fathers and sons are much too alike to see eye-to-eye because one party is in a stage of life where they know they are right, and the other party is in a stage of life where they know they cannot be wrong. Yet, my personal experience does not mirror this phenomenon. Probably due to my tomboy childhood, I have turned out to be the epitome of my father. Wearing tall straw cowboy hats and tan, genuine leather cowboy boots were a favorite outfit of my fathers, even though we lived in the suburbs. I always wanted to be a cowboy. He always wore his dark green fishing vest with brightly colored flies stuck to all the pockets to the river, and kept extra fishing line in the pocket of his Dockers. I always had a habit of picking out vests to wear to school. Bird hunting was the logical use of the purebred bird dog of one variety or another that was always living with us, so naturally, I became a bird hunter assistant and travel companion.

Regardless of our closeness in my single digit years, my father and I were both too stubborn to reach a common ground from when I was twelve until I was twenty. There were no disownments; there were no marks of abuse, just a respectful distance and unspoken truce to speak as little as possible because the few moments when our disagreements did come to a head were not pretty. And yet, here on the fourteenth of January, my father turns sixty, and I can do nothing but think of him. I suppose that is how it ought to be, on the birthday of someone that you love. Perhaps this is more important to me because I have realized how long it has been since I spent any quality time with him. Or maybe, after eight years of purposeful distance, I have begun to realize the opportunities I have missed.

I was four years old, and we had a large front, side, and back yard. The long green grass was always soft and thick, perfect for constant romping around the yellow rambler we were living in. Inevitably, it had to be cut, and inevitably, our Saturday chores began. Bright and early, all five of us kids would trek outside to rake and bag all the grass clippings that had shot out behind the diligent yard worker, my father. The plastic red rakes were too big for me to utilize effectively, so I was designated the task of bag handler. Holding open the black, plastic trash bag (that I could’ve have fit in) always meant itchy grass clippings would fall over the sides and onto my exposed arms and hands. Before the deed was done, the sun would be high in the sky and my shirt would be sticking to my back, my throat dry with grass flying around my face. Why we didn’t have a bag on our lawn mower that would expedite this slave labor by collecting the grass itself, I’m not sure. “Saturdays are work days, just like every other day of the week” I remember hearing.

In a few years, my father started construction on a house. Eventually we would move in, but the process was long and irksome. In the end it was a two story, white house with four large windows on the front. It sat on five acres, one of which my father cleared himself, with the help of my brothers, to build the house on. It wasn’t a mansion, and there wasn’t any breath-taking architecture to be completed. Why was it taking so long to throw up four walls and a roof? Why were there so many details to take care of? “If there is a job worth doing, it is worth doing right” he would always tell me.

A few years after that, we moved across the state. Initially we moved into another yellow rental house with a sloping, scrubby lawn and cheap cabinets. After awhile there, we bought a house around the corner, and were moving out of the burial place of my first pet, Herbie the hamster. I scrubbed the white walls in my room, dusted the clear light fixtures in my bathroom, and swept in the darkest recesses of the garage. The multi-day process was exhausting and obviously excessive. The renters before us hadn’t done nearly as good a job cleaning as we had, but we moved in anyway. No doubt the place would rent with or without my sweat sacrifice. But, “always leave something better than when you found it” was my father’s mantra.

In approximately five years of my childhood, I learned three lessons more valuable than anything I have learned thus far in my fifteen years of organized education. His integrity, humility, and incredible work ethic were more of an example to me than any renowned figure in history. Work, school, and social engagements constantly demand my time. However, my friends, skills, and knowledge I am sure, were acquired through the three principles I remember most from his teachings. So on a milestone like your sixtieth birthday, what should you get? I think you deserve to hear how much your child loves, honors, and respects you; instead of hearing her leave a hurried voicemail on your cell phone at the end of the day, wishing you just another “happy birthday."