As some of you may know, I am working on a book about my Dad. After he passed I felt it was something I needed to do. I have several chapters done, but have not let my Brothers see them yet. Part of me wants to show them, but then part of me is afraid they won't remember the same man I knew.
There has been a lot of controversy lately about authors and their non-fiction books. Memoirs, in particular. It seems people now feel the need to scrutinize these literary works. These are not biographies or auto-biographies which should be more or less factual. They are memoirs, based on our personal memories of the person. So we have some literary latitude says my writing coach.
One of the quotations I used in my book is "It doesn't matter who my Father was, it is who I remember he was." by Anne Sexton.
I remember my Father as a disciplinarian, a goof-ball, and a hard worker, just to mention a few.
In the disciplinarian vein, I remember an instance when my Brother Doug and I took our little Brother Phil for a wagon ride down the driveway. Phil was all for it until we left him in the wagon at the end of the driveway, right smack dab in the middle of a huge mud puddle. Doug and I took off back to the house just in time to meet Dad coming out of the back door with a hairbrush in his hand. "Oh-oh here it comes" said Doug, as we tried to make a run for it.
That's the way I remember it. I'm sure Phil has a different take on it.
1 comment:
Great post Theresa! I like it. I would like if you told us more too but you are a wonderful storyteller and I think you have a good sense of when a story says something but not too much.
Thanks for sharing your Dad with us. I really love seeing him through your eyes!
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