Woven in Time
I. “Nobody a writer loves is ever dead.” Richard Peck.
II.
I have always lived the braided essay. Coming from a family of story tellers, narratives defined us. At dinners, Mom, Dad, and I gathered our stories - new and old. Meals were heaped full of stories more than casseroles and hot dishes. Suppers were so alive with narratives that we doled them out between bites, adding revisions between helpings. Finally, the meal would end with Dad telling another tale between sips of Folgers while I would bring up another story between glances at my homework on top of the refrigerator and Mom would chime in commentary between dishes at the sink. The stories, like our lives, wove together, strengthening us.
III.
Today we buried Dad. Thanks to everyone who came to the wake and funeral and to all those who sent cards and messages. I am truly blessed to have such friends and colleagues.
After the wake we had a dinner in the church basement. This is unusual for wakes, or so I was told. Apparently members of Barb's church wanted to serve a meal, so we had dinner after the wake. People stayed for hours visiting and remembering Dad.
We did the same after the funeral. We had another lunch. We told more stories. Then we had to go out to Evergreen cemetery for the final ceremony. After that we returned to our house for another lunch (the food has been pouring in). We sat around for several hours talking and laughing and remembering and laughing and joking and laughing. Then we opened the letters and cards. With the donations we are going to order two cement benches for the small cemetery where Dad and Mom are buried. Dad loved that place and was vice-president of the cemetery board when he passed away. It is actually on land donated by my great-grandfather, Myrtle's father. The old Demann farm was just down the road. It's a fitting resting place for Mom and Dad. -- SATURDAY, JANUARY 06, 2007
IV.
My family loved the stories. But we lived to add our own bits to them. I told your mother to stand back while I was shaking the new can of grapefruit juice, but you know her, she just kept jabbering away about getting a new dryer. Then the darn thing just slipped out of my hand, flew across the kitchen and nicked her little toe, Dad would begin.
Now wait just a minute, Kenneth, Mom would interrupt, you never said a word about standing back. You were going on about getting a new starter for the 730 when you lost the grip. Then she would begin nodding her head, And it most certainly did fly all the way across the kitchen. Then she would begin shaking her head and rolling her eyes, correcting Dad’s version, but it landed squarely on my big toe.
Eventually they would turn to me and exclaim, You know I’m telling the truth, Kurt. I would add, I just remember getting to take the pick up to Crookston on a school night for Tylenol and a cold pack. Accuracy didn’t really matter. There was an emotional truth to each tale, an emotional truth that often moved Mom to tears from laughing so hard, that often moved Dad to pound his palm on the table in disagreement, and often moved me to shake my head in amazement.
Soon Mom or Dad would say, That’s was just like when . . . and they were off on another story. That was our way to connect one story to the next. It was our way to braid our stories together to form the fabric of our lives, of our realities, of ourselves.
V.
“Your folks always used to come in and order a Big Murph. Tex would always ask me to split it for them. But you know him, every time I brought their order out, he would claim that I had given Sue the larger portion. Boy, did he give me a hard time.
Once by the time he finished kidding me about giving him the smaller slice, Sue had already finished her half and ordered an ice cream cone!
Well, to fix him the next time they came in, I did slice it unevenly. I always gave Tex the larger slice. You know just to shut him up.
You know what he did? He saw that it was larger than Sue’s and he switched with her! Of course, he waited for her to take a couple bites - so her half was indeed smaller again - before he began complaining!
Every time someone splits an order, I think of Tex. And I miss him.”
-- Pam
VI.
““I want to thank you all for coming tonight,” I said to the people sprinkled about the pews in front of me. This was not going to be easy. But I had to do it. Dad deserved it.
“If you knew my father, you know how much he cared for his family. Once I got my license, I was able to drive in to school - no more getting up at 6 and spending an hour on the bus. Of course, once I was able to drive in to school, my city friends wanted me to swing by and pick them up first. Apparently, they didn’t like riding the bus anymore than I did - even if their bus rides were only a few minutes. Of course, I was too happy to drive across town and pick up Harry, and his sister who always tagged along, and Simon, and his brother who always tagged along.
Well, if you knew my father, you knew too how frugal he could be. He didn’t want me wasting gas driving all over town. But I was finally able to convince him to let me continue picking up my friends. He said that was fine, but I was - under no circumstances - ever to pick up any other kids - he just cringed at a car load full of kids and what would happen if I got into an accident. So I agreed.
But just as my luck would have it, the morning after striking our deal, I was picking Harry and Simon up - with their siblings in tow - when we pulled on to main street and saw the Kennedy’s - Simon’s neighbor - pulled over. Their car had died. So Renee, her brother, her friend, and her friend’s brother all piled into my car.
I was sick to my stomach driving to school. I shouldn’t have. What were the odds of Dad taking a trip to town at 8 in the morning. But still he had had a hard enough time tolerating five people in the car. He’d never let me drive again if he caught me with nine crammed into the Skylark.
But I never met him and I was too happy to park it at school and usher everyone out as if it was a Chinese fire drill.
What I didn’t know until a week later was that Dad had in fact seen me! He had been called to go out in the truck and had stopped by Cenex to fill up. He was just pulling out of the filling station when there goes his son in his Skylark with half the student body inside his car.
He was so mad that he had turned onto Main Street. He had intended to catch me red handed and let me have it. However, a block before he came to the high school, he turned. He had said that he didn’t want to embarrass me in front of my friends and that I must have had a good reason for picking up the extra kids.
That meant more to me than any father and son talk or fishing trip or hunting expedition ever could.”
VII.
Dad passed away yesterday. He was a trusted friend, a great man, and always, always a wonderful father. Wednesday, JANUARY 03, 2007
VIII.
“If you knew father, you knew his love for children. Every time we went out to the farm, he would load all of us neighborhood kids - he was like the designated neighborhood Dad - into our old pickup and cart us off to the farm. Fresh air and hard work and the land was all any kid needed to start off on the right foot was a belief of Dad’s. He would have two kids driving our little Yamaha 60 around the fields while two others fed the bottle lambs and the rest were dangling from him on the John Deere A.
Every Fourth of July, Dad would take me out to the farm to light off fireworks. I can’t begin to tell you how much I looked forward to this each summer. For a week I’d stack and restack the fireworks in my room. Just waiting to light them off. Dad would give in and let me light off a few bottle rocks or black cat firecrackers, but all the big stuff - and boy was I looking forward to lighting off the rocket ship, a huge cylinder wrapped in black with red flames and white light.
Well, this summer in particular, he took a neighborhood boy Rusty and his sister out to the farm with us. I didn’t know it then, but Rusty’s life was nothing like mine. I remember one time playing in the backyard with Rusty when Mom said supper was ready - spaghetti - one of my favorites. As I said goodbye to Rusty, I haphazardly asked him what he was having for supper. Dad, who was working on the lawn mower, overheard Rusty tell me, ‘Oh probably cereal.’ I couldn’t believe it. Who had cereal for supper? But it didn’t dawn on me then that not every kid had a mom at home to make him supper every night.
So when we got out to the farm, Dad promptly divided my total arsenal of fireworks in half between Rusty and me. This didn’t really bother me since I was swept up in dashing from firework to firework with my punk clenched between my teeth. Just as one fuse would catch and hiss, I’d dash to the next one, barely watching the firework ignite and streak skyward. It was only when we had reduced my arsenal to wrappers and ashes, did Dad grab my treasured rocket ship, carry it toward me and . . . handed it to Rusty with the instructions, ‘Go ahead and light it off.’
I didn’t watch it. I was inconsolable. Rusty didn’t bat an eye at me bawling my head off. He was far too anxious to light off the rocket ship.
I just scowled, arms folded and my cheeks wet, all the way home, not even getting out for ice cream when Dad stopped at the Mentor Dairy Queen.
Only when we got home, and I wept and pleaded my case to Mom, was it that Dad explained why he had betrayed me. He said that Rusty had nothing. I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t had any fireworks. He said that I had been blessed with many things Rusty hadn’t. I hadn’t noticed that his mother was never home or that he wore the same clothes every day or that the window in the front door was smashed or that they had drapes instead of curtains or that he had to fend for himself for his meals. If he could give Rusty a moment of bliss, he would do that.
It was a long time before I forgave him.
It was a longer time before I realized that Dad also suspected that Rusty’s sister, and maybe Rusty too, were likely abused by their father. It was a long time before I forgave myself.”
IX.
“This fall I drove by Tex’s place. He was out working on the tractor. I was in a hurry, but I thought, Oh shit, I might as well visit for awhile. Of course, he tried to talk me into looking at the tractor’s engine. But every time I tried, he would say, ‘Oh No, heavens, Jerry that’s okay, I’ll take care of it.’ By the time I left, it was dark and your dad and I had left the tractor, took a drive around the gravel pit, and had two cups of coffee and some pie. I didn’t even know he was sick. He never said a word.”
-- Jerry
X.
In my composition classes, I move students through the traditional range of essays: descriptive to narrative to analytical. But there is one type of essay that I have become fascinated with in the last few years, an essay whose form has become quite predominate: That of the braided essays.
If you have ever seen any of Quentin Tarantino's films (particularly, Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs) or read Toni Morrison’s novels, (specifically, Paradise) you have encountered the braided form. Even a few weeks ago I was watching a cartoon, Hellboy: Blood and Iron, with my step-daughter and saw the braided form. The cartoon featured one story following the traditional plot formula (basic situation, complications, climax, and resolution). But braided into this main plot was a back plot, told in flashback form, in which a second story was told in reverse (resolution, climax, complications, and finally basic situation). I was very intrigued. This form kept the reader in suspense because now the plot had two climaxes. Both stories fed into each other and constructed a rather complicated plot for a cartoon. At our first author’s chair, Andrew read a splendid braided essay in which he wove together two essays - one on the disintegration of a relationship and the other on baking - that perfectly complimented each other.
XI.
As Kristie and I walked in the door and began to get settled, the phone rang. The nurse had called Barb and told her to get to Riverview right away, for it seemed like Dad was having a heart attack.
So we raced up there and met the doctor as we walked in. She said Dad was suffering a series of minor heart attacks. They had scheduled a second ct-scan and more blood work, but Dad refused. He knew his time was at hand and didn't want to prolong death any longer. I didn't want him to either.
We sat around Dad, making him as comfortable as possible. Barb asked Kev and me into the hallway. She had contacted the priest from town and was wondering if we should ask Dad if he'd like to convert to Catholicism. Barb is a devout Catholic. My brother is somewhat of a religious mutt, though he was baptized a Jehovah's Witness many years ago and hasn't really followed any organized religion in roughly 15 years. I'm Catholic, but not to the degree Barb is. Dad always clung to his Southern Baptist roots and didn't convert when he married Mom. Barb didn't want to ask him. Neither did I. I agreed with Barb's husband, let him be. But Kevin said that he would ask him. And sure enough Dad squeezed his hand when Kevin asked him if he'd like to convert. So Father Buschy came up and we had a quick ceremony. Dad tried his best to pray, mumbling along with the Lord's Prayer and shaking Father's hand when he was all done.
Then we left him to sleep. Kevin went home while Barb, Kristie, and I stayed the night in the family room. Early this morning the nurse came in and said that Dad was passing. I heard my father moan and knew that his heart was giving out. By the time I made it to his side, he was all but gone. All that was left were a few reflexive gasps of air - just like my mom suffered when she passed.
Then he was gone.
We moved back to the family room and waited for Kevin. When we all gathered there in about an hour, we began talking and laughing about Dad and our family. Someone from the funeral home came in and said he wasn't sure he had the right place because he heard laughter. I liked that. It said a lot about our family and our father. Tuesday, JANUARY 02, 2007
XII.
I first encountered the braided essay in graduate school. For an advanced fiction class, I began writing an essay devoted to my grandmother. Over the semester, it began to take on a life of its own. I found that there wasn’t one clear narrative that did my grandmother justice; the more I concentrated on following one narrative, the more images and stories would want to come out. Finally, I abandoned my traditional narrative and decided to just let the stories, images, and ideas come. I sat with this incredible jumble of narratives, poems, images, and ideas sick to my stomach that I was going to fail the class. However, my professor suggested an essay entitled “A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay” by Brenda Miller.
Miller highlights the power of a braided essay, even though she refers to it as a “Lyric Essay.” I see the two quite differently though. The lyric essay is more of a blend of poetry and prose. The braided essay, on the other hand, is a blend of various essays, stories, images, voices, fragments, space, and viewpoints to create a layered essay. In a way it is a cousin to the multi-genre paper in that it seeks to examine a subject from different perspectives. In their text, Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, Miller and Suzanne Paola define the braided essays as a piece in which “you fragment your piece into separate strands that repeat and continue throughout the essay. There is more of a sense of weaving about it, of interruption and continuation, like the braiding of bread, or of hair” (110).
XIII.
“Who am I going to spend the holidays with now? Your mom and dad always used to pick me up and take me out to Barb and Arnie’s. As soon as a holiday neared, I could count on your dad to call a few days ahead of time and arrange things. Then after Sue passed, Tex still would call before Easter and Christmas - and of course - all the kids’ birthdays. What a nice man. Sometimes he would call when he was coming into town. Just to see if he could pick me up if I had any errands to run.”
-- Eunice
XIV.
Looking at his cap, with its faded green material, frayed John Deere logo, and its patented 'teepee' folded brim, I knew how I would always remember Dad. It was the same image I watched when I was younger, around ten, when I was too small to lift and stack bales by myself. So I had to drive the 730 and watch Dad. In my mind he would always be a tall, sturdy man entrenched on the teetering and lurching hayrack. Pale blue eyes inspecting the field. Forehead etched with deep wrinkles. Eyes shaded by the peeked brim of his cap. Bald head protected from the scorching rays by the cap. The skin at the base of his skull baked to a perpetual scorch mark, where the cap was buttoned and exposed skin. The corner of his mouth gripped a glowing, filterless Pall Mall. His breast pocket of his light cotton shirt housed the rest of the pack. Hair on his broad chest and chiseled arms cluttered with alfalfa leaves. Huge hands protected by scuffed leather gloves. His right hand clenched a red bale hook. His lower waist tried to cling to tattered and patched Levi's. Nonexistent rear and white Hanes briefs exposed by his sagging jeans.
XV.
Barb called. Dad might have suffered a small stroke. He had trouble talking, numbness in his arm, and seemed disoriented. So we visited yesterday and found Dad to be suffering quite a bit. He must have had a more violent stroke. I could hardly understand him. He was alert; he just couldn't speak well. Kristie was in tears.
The doctor ran a ct-scan and saw hints of a stroke, but there appeared to be no severe bleeding and it wasn't a tumor in his brain.
Kevin and his wife arrived, so we turned on the TV. The Rose Bowl was on and Dad kept slurring "RRRRRROOOOOOSSSSEEEE."
I realized he was asking if it was the Rose Bowl. Then he growled "MMMICCCCHHH," which, of course, was him asking if Michigan was playing. So he was alert. But it was a struggle to communicate effectively.
Barb and Matt showed up and were shaken too. Dad had changed quite a bit since she saw him last. Then Dad became very tired and we went to the family room to visit.
We met with the doctor and she said that they were doing everything for him - including giving him some morphine. But she said something I'll never forget, "Are we prolonging life or prolonging death?" I thought that was very well put. Dad had put up a valiant effort in the face of all his suffering, but his time was approaching.
Dad seemed in good spirits, though he could barely talk. As we left, he shook my hand, looked me in the eyes, and nodded. Monday, JANUARY 01, 2007
XVI.
I held Dad’s hat the morning he died. I just couldn’t bring myself to pack it away with his clothes, toiletries, and all the cards he had amassed since taking ill. For the final time. I looked at this hat, the brim still folded teepee style, but the newly printed Hartz Trucking logo shown brightly in teal lettering. His former boss, Ferral, brought it by the house a few months ago when he heard Dad was ill. Looking at it, I knew how I didn’t want to remember him. Lying in bed. His eyes sunken and darker even than the shadows. His oxygen tubes looping over each ear and drooping down his cheeks and fitting into his nose. His nose chapped and bleeding from the pure oxygen forced up his nose and into his ever shriveling lungs. Dark liver like spots blotching his cheeks. Pale blue eyes that always hesitated a moment before meeting mine. Eyes that said, “I’m tiring,” more than any words. His bald head, with more blotches appearing, resting in a heavy pillow. The bed angled up to help his withering lungs inhale. The skin sagging at his throat. More tubes and IV’s sticking into his arm at the elbow. Band-Aids and medical wraps keeping them in place. A red glowing plastic clamp on his right index finger monitoring the oxygen level of his blood.
A paper thin hospital gown draping over his dwindling frame.
XVII.
“Tex would come in to the REA to complain about each bill. I really think he just liked to give us a hard time. He would come in with the bill all crumpled up in his shirt pocket. Of course, he would always sit down for a cup of coffee or three. It wasn’t long before he forgot all about his complaint and wanted to know how our families were. Tex would turn a thirty second complaint into an hour visit. For all of the complaining, he never did ask us to change anything.
All of us ladies in the office just loved to visit with him - we couldn’t get enough of his southern drawl. We pretty much shut the place down while he was in.
Well, after ten years or so, we decided to get even with Tex. I called Sue and told her that we typed up a fake bill and were going to send it out. We overcharged him by several hundred dollars. I just wanted to clue your mom in so she wouldn’t get all upset. Sure enough, Sue got your dad so worked up, that he came in waving that bill high over his head claiming, “I’ve got you this time. Now you’ve done it!”
I tell you we had the whole thing rehearsed, but when we saw your dad, we all lost it. I bet we laughed for a good 10 minutes. We still talk about that prank. And it never stopped him from coming in. Even when I guess he was ill, he still came in. Only he never told us that he was sick. Well, he told us he was doctoring in Crookston, but he never mentioned it was for chemo therapy. So now you’re going to just have to come in and complain about your statement. Gotta keep that tradition alive.”
-- Darlene
XVIII.
Dad was transferred to a swing bed room in Riverview Hospital in Crookston. He seemed in excellent spirits. In fact, he met with a physical therapist and was eager to get up and start walking again. That was on Friday.
Today Kristie, the kids, and I stopped by for a brief visit. He was in fine spirits and we had a nice time. But we had some things to take care of, so we left. Later that night, he called worried about the roads and how we were going to get home safely. I reassured him that we would make it, but he still insisted on giving us the safest route home. I even joked that I had the cruise on just to be safe. Dad chuckled, knowing that I was kidding. Sunday, December 29, 2006
XIX.
In the graduate essay on my grandmother, for instance, I wanted to tell the story of my discovery of how she once built a tree house incredibly high in the oak in our backyard. Several years after her death, my dad and I had to cut the tree up because it had been toppled in a windstorm back in 2000. As we cut into the remains, I found evidence of her old tree house. Indeed, it was incredibly high in the tree, much higher than any of the tree houses I dared build in the tree. As I wrote this narrative, it occurred to me that this incident was a great metaphor for my grandmother and all that I didn’t know about her. So this piece became the center of my braided essay. However, when I let the piece stand alone, it just seemed lacking to me. Miller notes the same thing occurred in her writing, “But as I tried to order this material of memory and image into a logical, linear narrative, the essay became flat, intractable, stubbornly refusing to yield any measure of truth” (“A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay” 17).
My essay contained truth, but it was flat. I knew there was more to it - and my grandmother - than I had on paper. So I began to take some of the other pieces I had written and weave them into my main essay. I was absolutely shocked at the results. My piece suddenly became much more powerful and complex. I added interviews with my uncles and aunts. I added a fictionalized piece about Granny in the nursing home. Each piece began to not only work independently but to also add layers of meaning to the other pieces. For example, while I couldn’t imagine the grandmother I knew - who by this time was in her seventies - scaling the oak and building a tree house, I could interview or chronicle stories from those who knew the wily younger version of my grandmother who did such a thing and many more.
XX.
Dad will be released from Altru in Grand Forks this week. His physical therapy begins today. He hasn’t been walking in two weeks. But he has spent time sitting up in a chair. A small victory. But given that this time last week I thought he would be dead by now, it’s more than a small victory.
Late last week Dad’s new chemo pills arrived. Three thousand dollars for a month’s supply. His health insurance pays for half. I hope it’s worth the investment. But there’s no amount I wouldn’t pay to have him longer.
Kristie, Koko, Casey, and I - along with Kristie’s mother, Gail - spent Christmas Eve with Dad in his hospital room. My sister’s family showed up as well. It was a good night.
The people continue to pour in to see Dad. Last week when I was visiting him, an old classmate stopped by with her older sister. They are daughters of a close friend of Dad’s. But they are both chatter boxes who tend to drive you (me) nuts. When they came in, I just looked at Dad and smiled. Then I said, “Well, Dad I hate to be going but I’m late.” Then I got outta there. Poor Dad. They visited with him for about an hour. Dad is like me. He hates to hurt anybody’s feelings or be rude. So he politely listened to them for the entire hour. Even when he tried to make up an excuse to get them to leave (I believe he tried to say that he had to have an IV drip put in), he was out of luck. Both visitors happen to be nurses, so they said they’d be happy to help him with it! Poor guy.
But I know too it proves to Dad how loved he is. Even if he doesn’t realize it on a conscious level, I know he feels it. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2006
XXI.
“Grandpa called on his cell phone wanting to talk to Mom, but she was at a training session. I asked him where he was. He just said that he was on his way back from Bemidji and thought he’d stop by and see what we would be having for supper. I asked him what he had been doing in Bemidji. He told me how he had gone to Crookston earlier for his chemo treatment. On the way back he stopped and picked up a hitchhiker. He was Native American and was headed to Cass Lake. Grandpa intended just to take him to Marcoux Corner, but he said they got to talking and were having such a good visit that he decided to just keep driving and take him to Bemidji.”
-- Matt
XXII.
Dad loved cars, tractors, and tools. As a boy I watched him slice two by fours with a skill saw. It looked like an extension of his hand. One quick zip and the plank floated to the ground on a cushion of wood chips and dust. In my hands the saw felt lethal. The board rejected the saw every inch of the way as I cut it. The board thudded to the ground while I was left with wood chips on my lips and dust in my eyes.
I watched him change spark plugs. The socket wrench obeyed his hand's every command. A few rapid turns and the plugs seemed to unscrew themselves. In my hands the wrench felt alien. I groaned and tugged until my knuckles were white before I realized I was turning the wrench the wrong way. The plugs often snapped off at the root just as I felt they were about to finally relent.
I watched him sink nails into boards with one whap from the hammer. The hammer seemed to float in his fist. The nails instantly sank flush in the wood. In my hands the hammer felt clumsy. The nails invariable bent in half. Or I purpled my thumbnail.
This was the way of my adolescence.
XXIII.
Kristie and I visited Dad last night. He seemed back to himself some. He was talking and animated. It really was a change from Saturday where I'd sit with him and he'd doze off and wake up and barely utter a word. But I think this might be the effect of the morphine they are giving him. It gives him the illusion, or at least the sensation, that his lungs are full of air instead of feeling like he is slowly suffocating, which he is.
Dad had quite a few visitors yesterday. His sister, an old friend, another old friend and his wife, my brother and sister and then Kristie and I. All the company did him good. But he was pretty tired when we finally made it up to see him. He was finishing his supper. I noticed a new throw blanket wrapped around his shoulders. I guess Barb thought he looked cold so she bought it for him.
Sure enough one of the first things he had me do was take it off him. Then he began to argue that Barb didn't need to get him that and people should stop focusing so much on him. Same old Dad. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2006
XXIV.
The shop, yard, and pastures were my dad's domain. My room, books, and tablets were mine. Often we would end an evening sitting at the kitchen table. I would be writing a paper while he would be finishing his log, for his real job was as a truck driver. My pen, nuzzled between my index finger and the large writing callous on my middle finger just below the first joint, would flow across the page in a stream of cursive words. My dad's pen, fisted in his right paw, seemed lost amidst his sausage-sized fingers. It would stutter and spurt in print across the log.
Years later when I was home for the weekend from college, I would sit at the same table with my lap top. My fingers would waltz across the keypad orchestrating my words. It was nearly impossible for my dad to even use a calculator. He pecked away at it with his index finger one key at a time. Inevitably he would punch two or three keys at a time. That was when my mother stepped in.
This too was the way of my adolescence.
XXV.
“Tex and Kurt - both grand storytellers - were debating something horrible that had happened to one of Tex’s neighbors, Randy, a fellow trucker. They agreed on the main points - on one trip Randy’s truck broke down in the middle of winter. While unloading his truck, he froze his toes. It was the most excruciating pain he had ever felt. It got so bad that his toes turned black. But since he didn’t have health insurance, he didn’t go to the doctor. He suffered through it and miraculously didn’t lose any toes.
However, they couldn’t agree on what Randy had been hauling. Tex believed Randy had been hauling junked cards; Kurt believed he had been hauling grain.
So they argued, their voices rising over each other - as if the one who talked the loudest would prove that their story was the correct one.
Finally, Tex fished his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and punched Randy’s number. Kurt just shook his head.
After Tex said hello, he began trying to influence Randy to side with him because the next words out of Tex’s mouth were, ‘Randy, remember that time your truck broke down when you were hauling a load of crushed cars and you froze your toes?’
But Tex’s response to Randy’s answer was classic: ‘Oh, you weren’t hauling cars,’ at that Kurt began to pound the table and gloat. ‘Are you sure. What were you hauling then . . . Oh, a load of hay bales,’ Tex said.
Now it was his turn to gloat.
‘Thanks. Nope. That’s all I wanted. Talk to ya later.’
Then Kurt said, ‘Well, that settles it. I’m right.’
The look on Tex’s face was priceless. It was like someone had just cheated him out of a hundred dollars.
‘What?’
‘Yeah, I was closer to the truth,’ Kurt said.
‘Dab-blame it,’ you know Tex never cussed in his life, ‘you were not!’
Then they began to argue about whose version - though they both were wrong - was more correct.
‘I’m right. Cars are stacked on a trailer just like bales. Right, Kristie?’ Tex asked.
‘No way,’ Kurt cut in. ‘I’m right. Grain is a crop like hay. Right, Kristie?’
I just shook my head and concluded, ‘yout two are definitely father and son.’
-- Kristie
XXVI.
How does the braided essay relate to my high school students? First, I have many students who revisit the same topics in their writing. Last year, for example, in my basic level composition class, Blake wrote about the death of his father from cancer, Jenna too wrote about her father’s death in a snowmobile accident along highway 32, Dan returned in various essays to his love of baseball, Jack wrote about his father and their construction business.
I normally don’t encourage such focus on one subject, yet it occurs a few times in each class. Now I am not about to make them write about something that they don’t want to. I will certainly urge them to explore other areas of interest, but for some students they are writing again and again about a specific topic for important reasons.
While reflecting on this class in particular, I decided to try to incorporate the braided essay into my composition class as a culminating activity. For their final activity, I now have students revise five of their submitted essays and put them in a portfolio that is part of their final grade. As an alternative to that, I will offer students the chance to create braided essays. In Dan’s case, he wrote nearly every paper on baseball: a descriptive piece on the baseball field, a narrative about an intense situation in a Babe Ruth playoff game, another narrative about a rite of passage in which the coach trusted him enough - after several years in the system - to let Dan call the pitches, an expository paper explaining how to throw a curve ball, and a persuasive essay on the magic of baseball as America’s past-time.
While each of these essays can stand on their own, I think there are plenty of rich opportunities for Dan to weave several together to see what new forms and connections are made. As Miller began writing more braided essays, she “found that they started to expand more outward, taking on myriad facts and stories of the outer world as well as the inner” (21). For Dan, he explored both his inner world of baseball and the outer world as well. For example, his personal love of baseball is evident and he also explored America’s love for baseball and what that reveals about our culture. However, his essays, when gathered together in his final portfolio, read more as a kid obsessed with baseball, which he is, rather than a full set of essays. They had the feel of “here is how to try and write about baseball for every possible topic.”
XXVII.
Yesterday I was in a department meeting when I was paged to the office (not a good sign). And it wasn't. Dad has more blood clots. These are in his legs. They did an emergency surgery to prevent them from reaching his heart. However, my sister met with Dad's lung specialist, Dr. Koeslaugh, and she said that this new cancer has spread in his lungs and is very aggressive. She doubts that chemo will do any good. She said she wouldn't wish this type of cancer on her worst enemy. Dad will basically end up suffocating to death.
After this news, I picked up Kristie and headed to GF with images of when I saw Mom die. The doctor was there to meet us, and she was great. She is caring and personable and, as Barb said, "She is worth every cent."
While I expected to see Dad at death's door, he was not so bad off. He could speak and was quite coherent. Though he is not aware of the dire prognosis. And I think we'll keep it that way. I think he suspects this is the final leg of the journey, but he is likely not letting on to protect us. And we're doing the same thing. Funny.
So I'll be gone today and tomorrow. Dad will be in the ICU for at least another five days. Then we will likely move him to a rest home for the final weeks. I just hope he goes quietly and painlessly. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2006
XXVIII.
For students who will brave the braided essay, I will have them select one piece they feel very strongly about, the one they feel they worked the hardest on and are the most satisfied with. Then we will explore possible connections to other pieces or look for areas that are yet unexplored. In Dan’s case, I would suggest he try weaving some of the essays together. For example, he could take his persuasive essay on baseball as America’s past-time and braid in pieces from his descriptive essay on the baseball field. He could also weave in pieces from his narrative essay on their playoff game.
These pieces properly woven together would add a different dimension that was lacking in the original persuasive essay. I would also suggest that he interview others to get their thoughts on their love of baseball. He could add other voices from professional players, amateur players, and other baseball fans. He may even choose to chronicle his frustrations and successes at how he is compiling his separate pieces into a braided essay and weave that into the final piece! The possibilities for Dan’s final braided essay are many. And they all lead him to a richer understanding and experience.
XXIX.
“What I remember about your father is that old Green Chevy he used to drive and how on Sundays he would round all of us neighborhood kids up and haul us out to the farm. Remember that? He had that old motorcycle out there. He would have your brother take turns giving us rides on that while he took others out on the tractor. He had others still bottle feeding the lambs.”
-- Lance
XXX.
I remember dreading working outside with Dad in the winter. Despite being draped in half a closet of clothes, I could only stand the temperatures for an hour. Two at most. With the hood to his army surplus parka pulled tight to reveal just a pinhole to peer out off, Dad worked outside all day.
His favorite activity was plowing snow on his 730 John Deere. On weekend afternoons when my dad was actually home and not on the road driving truck, he would reach his limit of sitting around in the house, which usually took about half an hour. Then he would layer on the clothing and venture outside to start his tractor. Dad would clear our yard in an afternoon and then drive over to the neighbor’s and plow out their yard, returning home after dark. Maybe after working for 40 years as a truck driver hauling other peoples' property, he relished pushing his own.
Once when he was out in the truck, a blizzard dumped three feet of snow on us. It was up to me to plow a path to the highway. It took me an hour, the coldest 60 minutes of my life, to simply plow a single path from our driveway to the highway. Forget about the rest of the yard! Dad could do that when he got back. And he did.
There were times Mom made me bundle up and run out and tell him lunch or dinner was ready. "Dad," I would scream over the chugging 730 engine, "dinner's ready. It's five o' clock. Come in already!" Out there on his tractor, he would fall into a trance and lose all track of time. It was amazing to see how he could intuit the distance between the edge of the bucket and the ground. It would just skim across the yard, never gouging into the grass and ripping up sod. To watch him pop the clutch with his right hand, then shift the tractor from third gear to reverse with his left hand, then expertly work the controls to raise and lower the loader and empty the bucket full of snow with his right hand again was like watching a great artist. He made it look so easy. When I tried to plow out the yard, the bucket skipped over the yard, gouging divots of driveway and grass all the way. Orchestrating the clutch, gears, and loader controls was a nightmare. I spent more time trying to get the tractor in and out of the correct gears, while bludgeoning my mom's precious yard, than I did actually plowing snow.
XXXI.
I took Dad to the Cancer Center of North Dakota in GF on Monday. We were seeking a second opinion about his cancer. Altru, where Dad is being treated now, is just too massive. The nurses are great, but we rarely meet a doctor and we feel like we’re an inconvenience rather than their purpose.
The first nurse to great us as the new cancer clinic knew Dad immediately. She had worked with Mom. Actually, Mom was one of her participants in helping the nurse with her master’s degree. She remembered Mom by name and was very concerned about Dad. I liked her immediately.
Next we met with Dr. Noise. Unlike Dr. Walsh (the Altru doctor), Dr. Noise didn’t act like he was in a hurry or like we were an inconvenience. He was very optimistic about Dad’s treatment and was suspect about some of the things Dr. Walsh was trying. What is so frustrating about Dr. Walsh is that the man has no personality. He basically was treating my dad like he was already a goner. Once Dad asked him if he would confer with the Mayo Clinic (for any extra help or cutting edge technology that would save Dad’s life) and Walsh said, “I’m a big boy. I’ve treated thousands of cases. It’s not brain surgery.” What a prick. How would he act if his life was hanging in the balance.
What concerns me is that Dad is growing weaker by the minute. In October Barb, Dad, Kristie, and I went down to the cities for my uncle’s Dick’s funeral. Dad was the picture of health. Now he could hardly move around the house without being winded.
As I dropped him off, he asked if I would keep the phone in my room - just in case he needed to call me to take him to the emergency room. How times have changed! Mom and Dad used to sleep with the phone when I was younger - in case I got into trouble and needed help.
Fortunately, I made it through the night with no call. But when I got up around 5:45 and made my way to the bathroom, the phone rang.
The stab that my heart received is indescribable. I can only imagine it was the same pain my parents felt when I had to call them after one of my car accidents. It was like someone was stirring my guts with a stick. Again the irony hits me: how our roles have been reversed.
Then I realize it - I will never feel such shelter and protection from my parents ever again.
Dad needed to go to the emergency room. He couldn’t breath when he was lying down. So I headed straight out to pick him up. I thought, “This is it. I’m going to lose Dad.” I have been prepared for it really ever since Mom passed away two years ago, but I realized that I was not ready yet.
Dad looked pretty glum when I got there. He was dressed and sitting at the kitchen table. He made it to the Blazer, but it took him about 10 minutes to recover from the effort. Before I left, I called Barb and told her that I was taking Dad in (she had a doctor’s appointment lined up for him later that day). She called Dad’s cell phone and said she’d be at the emergency room too. Dad was frustrated that she was going out of her way to help him, but she refused to go back home.
By the time we reached Fisher, Dad’s breathing steadied and it was like old times. We were joking and talking about the weather and cars and Mom. I found out that front wheel drive cars have been around since the 1990s and that they had to move the engine sideways to accommodate front wheel drive. I also found out that Mom and Dad’s first house had no indoor plumbing. They had a big tub which they used to bath in and they had an outhouse in the yard!
Once we arrived at the emergency room, I was relieved. After having Dad in the hospital at Crookston, where they mistakenly treated him for pneumonia, even though he didn’t have the symptoms, and never saw the same doctor twice, these people at Altru were experts. Within the first hour, Dad had several orderlies and nurses helping him and was taken down for ct scans and blood work. Within another hour he had results - blood clots. They were what were causing him to lose so much strength and struggle to breath (his oxygen level dipped to 66. I’m surprised he didn’t pass out during the night and die).
Now he is in ICU. Barb and I followed Dad as the nurse wheeled him up. I had not been to ICU since the night Mom died. As we entered I thought, “Not this again.” Then as she wheeled him to the rooms, I thought, “Please, don’t put him in the same room as the one Mom died in.” Fortunately, he is not in that same room. Barb said later that she was thinking the same thing.
He is on blood thinners to dissolve the clots. But even when he takes his oxygen mask off to eat, his oxygen level plummets and he struggles to breath. But he is in good hands. I hope the clots dissolve and we can get him some new chemo sessions from the new doctors at the cancer center of North Dakota. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2006
XXXII.
I think about Dad’s fingertips. Back in '94 when he had a triple bypass. The nurse wanted to teach him how to check his pulse so he could monitor his heart rate. Her supple fingers caressed and coddled the nether region of Dad’s wrist and found his pulse instantly. His workman's finger poked and prodded the same region but couldn't find a pulse. I watched as the nurse held her tiny fingers over his thick fingers and messaged them right on his vein. He still felt nothing.
My fingers searched and swirled upon the vein and delighted in the determined rhythm. His weathered fingers poked and prodded again, determined to find it or drub it out. He still felt nothing.
Dr. Wolf finally solved the mystery of Dad’s fingertips. He said many men lose feeling in their fingertips due to working outside in the brutal Minnesota winters. Indeed, my dad's love for cars, tractors, and tools extended all year round. Thus he spent the majority of his days outside -- whether it was 90 degrees above or 20 degrees below zero. And his passion for hard outdoor labor had cost him his delicate touch.
One night home from college, I began working on an essay on my lap top at the kitchen table. I fell into one of my trances. By the time I finished my first draft, I realized it was well past eleven and my parents had gone to bed. By the time I finished my second draft, my dad entered the kitchen on his way to the bathroom. "Boy, you're still at it? It's almost one. Go to bed already," he said squeezing his eyes shut against the kitchen light and listening to my fingertips dance across the keys.
This was the beginning of my adulthood.
XXXIII.
It’s good to be back to school. I’m used to Kristie, Casey, and Koko caring about me, but I’m not used to the staff and students caring so much.
Dad has cancer in both lungs. The CT confirmed this. It’s also an aggressive cancer. It’s actually the same type of cancer that he had seven years ago in his hip (and which he beat with the help of radiation). However, this round seems to be the last. The lung specialist was a dear woman who sounded positive and contacted Dad’s cancer doctor who said he will put together a chemo therapy treatment to fight this new batch of cancer. But I have no illusions. It was hard enough battling it when it was just in the form of nodules in one lung. This new spider web type in both lungs my well spell his doom. I just hope it is a lot later than sooner. I also hope it is as painless as possible.
When Mom was diagnosed with cancer, I rode up with my brother to see her in GF. I was shocked by how he still focused on trivial things before we left - we had to let the car warm up, we had to run to the grocery store for his wife (Mountain Dew and sherbet - I still remember), and so on.
On our way home from the doctor yesterday, Dad had me run in to the grocery store and get bread and a pizza. Even though he is facing the biggest fight of his life, he still needs to eat. I ran home to attend Koko’s Christmas concert. All in the face of my father slowly dying. And this weekend Dad will come over. We’ll visit (talk about the weather, how he’s feeling, what my brother and sister have been up to, what the kids are up to) and we’ll watch football, maybe we’ll watch a “Seinfeld” or two - we’ll laugh at George’s and Kramer’s antics like we have a hundred times before - then we’ll bitch about Bush and we’ll talk about the local boy who was just killed in Iraq. All trivial in the face of what is growing and squeezing the air out of his lungs. But through all of this I realized something - - the trivial details are all we have. They are what constitute our lives.
Talk about humbling.
In the face of being without Mom and Dad, what else do I have other than all my little trivialities rolled up into one big thing called my life? Then I realize another (and I believe I wrote about this in another blog) - nothing is trivial, especially running into the grocery store for bread and a pizza. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2006
XXXIV.
The braided essay I plan to model for my students is this very piece. Like Jenna and Blake, the loss of my father is something I find myself exploring more and more in my writing. So I have gathered all of the things I ever wrote about him.
Reading each has a greater emotional impact than ever before. These pieces have a renewed importance for me that I could never have fathomed before. In fact, I have these essays spread before me on the table now. I also have printed out the blog entries I kept chronicling Dad’s death last winter and my thoughts on it. In addition, I also have several descriptive pieces of Dad - both in health and decline.
Now I see connections I would never have before. In the descriptive segments, I see an odd comparison emerging. I have an image of Dad standing on a wagon baling hay, his old John Deere cap cocked high on his head shading it. Right next to that I have an image describing me holding his last cap, Hartz Truck Line, on the morning of his death, thinking about how much things have changed. In another set of descriptions, I have an image describing Dad touching and holding me on a tractor. Yet there is another small description of me touching and holding Dad in his wheelchair. These pieces lead me to a greater emotional impact than a traditional piece would have.
I also have recorded several comments Dad’s friends made privately to me at the funeral and wake. Separately, the comments seem trivial. But woven into the context of Dad’s life and death, they are anything but trivial, so I wove those in to the essay too. Each also provides an outside voice and perspective that add depth to the overall essay.
XXXIV.
Dad got his biopsy results back: cancer. He never even had pneumonia. His cancer has spread to his other lung now. What is frustrating is the faith I have lost in hospitals and the medical professions in general. Riverview in Crookston pumped Dad full of antibiotics for nearly four days, all for naught. All while the cancer was growing in his lungs.
Then we met with one of his cancer doctors and he told Dad (I was there and heard it myself) that he didn’t know “what in the hell is in your lungs, but we’re treating it as cancer. It’s damned funny stuff.”
It seems, from what I have been able to piece together, that Dad has two different types of cancer in his lungs. One type is in the form of nodules in his lungs. When he had his last ct scan, these appeared to have shrunk from his chemo treatments. Another type is in the form of a spider web appearance in his left lung. They initially thought it was tuberculosis and Dad’s other doctor was shocked when her biopsy revealed it to be cancerous. Yet this other doctor says he doesn’t know what it is, but the other doctor calls it cancer? Frustrating.
But that doesn’t change this: I’m going to lose my father. I had a rough day last Friday. But that realization has, somehow, made it easier. I have no trouble writing those words - my father is going to die. It’s horrible and I don’t want to be without both my mother and father, but denying the truth does me no good. For me, the truth brought some form of peace.
Tomorrow we go to meet with his second doctor to go over his second ct results. I’m glad I’m going with so I can try to get to the bottom of what the hell is going on. But what do I know about cancer? We are also going to go over to the new cancer center in Grand Forks to try to get a second opinion from their doctors.
Yes, I’m going to lose him sooner rather than later. So an average trip to Grand Forks has become anything but ordinary. For that I’m thankful. I value every moment with Dad like never before. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 06, 2006
XXXVI.
Dad once found a guard lose beneath my Cavalier. Bright and early the next morning he had me out with him fixing it. I didn’t tell him that I had been driving for a whole month with full knowledge that the guard had become lose and often dragged on the ground. But once Dad spotted it, he woke me and set to work.
"Look at this. No wonder the thing wouldn't hold," my dad said from beneath the car. He opened his left hand. I peered down at the small broken black bolt engulfed in his palm. "Who would ever make a plastic bolt?" he wondered as he tried to slide out from beneath the car, but he reminded me more of an insect flipped on its back. I offered my hand and helped him to his feet. He headed to the shop to scour for a real bolt. My dad was comprised of the old American stock that believes not in plastic or fat free foods or Hillary Clinton, but in metal and steak and eggs and LBJ. In a moment he returned from the shop with the replacement pieces ready, a shiny new metal bolt, a nut, two washers, and one lock washer, just in case. That guard was never going to come undone again.
Then Dad was back under the car, in his natural habitat, while I stood and tried to be of use, mostly just blocking the sun from his eyes as the rays filtered in through the engine and grill.
The problem arose when my dad tried to hold the tiny nut and gently weave it onto the minute threads on the bolt. His fingertips don't have any feeling left in them anymore. He complained of this while I stood watching him as I had done for the previous 28 years.
I watched him grapple with the bolt for about five minutes. Maybe he was too proud to ask for my help.
Finally, I said, "I'll give it a try Dad."
It took me all of five seconds to tighten the nut on the bolt as my dad stood and watched me work.
This had become the way of my adulthood.
XXXVII.
Dad called last night and said that he expects to be released today. My sister is taking time off to be there for him. I’m taking Friday off to help him and possibly take him for a chemo treatment. It will still be a few days until we find out the results of the biopsy. If the mass in his lungs happens to cancer instead of pneumonia, it sure spread quickly. And that wouldn’t be good. I am preparing for the worst (for the new mass to be cancerous) and for the best (for it just to be pneumonia). That tells you how dire things are. But my dad is a strong man and will make the best of it. As will I. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 06, 2006
XXXVIII.
How do I keep the braided essay from collapsing into total chaos both for myself and my students? I don’t know that I can. There is really is no form or set of rules for the braided essay. I cannot simply tell Dan, for instance, to begin with two paragraphs from his descriptive piece on the baseball field and then blend in the introduction to his persuasive paper before weaving in a quote from grandparents on their love for the Twins. That might be effective, but it might be utterly confusing too.
Miller relies on intuition more than anything in devising her essays. She states, “I deserted a narrative line in favor of images that intuitively rose up in the work.” She opened herself up to the essay itself and listened to what it wanted to say, “I abandoned my authority, and with that surrender came great freedom: I no longer had to know the answers. I didn't have to come to a static conclusion. Instead, the essay began to make an intuitive kind of sense” (“A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay” 18).
My experience with this essay echoes this concept. Once I was no longer concerned with illustrating one specific image or idea about my dad, I felt all kinds of possibilities open up. I simply had to open myself to them and see where they fit best. Certainly this was messy and fraught with mistakes. But the closer I looked, I soon found natural places to blend in the narratives. In that sense, the work took on a life of its own.
XXXIX.
Dad is in the hospital. He has pneumonia. That’s not good for a fully healthy man Dad’s age (68), but it really isn’t good when he is also battling lung cancer.
I got the call Friday morning. My brother, Kevin, had to run him to the emergency room. Dad initially thought he was having a problem with his heart. However, it turned out to be double pneumonia. So we spent most of the weekend visiting him in the hospital. Kristie and I talked for several hours with him on Friday night. Then we visited twice on Saturday, finishing the evening watching the Notre Dame and USC game. Mom was a HUGE Notre Dame fan. Yesterday I watched the football game with him. I haven’t enjoyed a football game quite that much in awhile. It wasn’t the score; it was just enjoying the time with Dad.
Today he was supposed to be moved to Grand Forks where his lung specialist is. We are going up to visit him and watch the Monday Night Football game with him.
He seems to be in fine spirits, though I imagine he gets lonely. Now I just hope the congestion in his chest starts to loosen and come up. It is a labor for him to breath without oxygen. Unfortunately, this is all too familiar after Mom’s emphysema.
But you do what you can. You treasure the time you have. You preserve the memories. You love them as much as you can. And when they’re gone, you move on and, as a fellow blogger noted this morning after suffering the death of a close friend, you start new traditions to replace the void left by the absence of the old traditions.
In short, you live. As best you can. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2006
XL.
A father, a son, a tractor. A sturdy lap to sit on. The scent of Ivory soap and Old Spice. Dad placed my hand on the wheel. It was alive - jerky and wild - no power steering - the thump of each rut, gopher hole, and bump ricocheted up from the tires, the axles, the steering column, and the wheel. It reverberated in my hand, forearm, elbow, until it jolted deep into my shoulder socket. The jolt was softened by Dad's firm chest, his soft cotton shirt, and the crumple of his pack of filterless Pall Malls jammed into his shirt pocket. His left arm cradled me while his right - powered by his his hairy forearm - as thick as my thigh - mastered the wheel.
This picture was taken by my sister, Barb, as she stood on the left rear tractor axle while Dad drove, balancing me on his right leg, my head tucked under his jutting chin and tender throat.
I found the picture in an old roll-top desk my grandfather made. My sister and I were cleaning out the upstairs of Dad's house three months after he passed away.
I recall having seen the picture as a child, but I had forgotten its existence, until Barb dug it out and handed it to me, smiling.
What shocked me was neither that I had forgotten the picture nor the image of father and son. What jolted me was how much Dad then looked like me now. When I look in the mirror - mostly in my eyes - I see a hint of him peering back.
XLI.
Does that mean a student has to rely solely on intuition, as Miller does? Of course not. For this braided essay on my father, I relied on intuition some, but in most cases I was quite strategic. For example, I chose to begin the blog entries beginning with my father’s funeral and working back chronologically. This was done with the intention of adding some irony to the piece, for as the overall work unfolds, it does so with the knowledge that my father is dead. This mimics the experience I get now as I go back and read all of pieces I have compiled on my father (many of which were written and last read while he was alive). But at the same time, I chose to weave in the comments from people at his wake and funeral at certain spots in the essay that just felt right. This essay was both a strategic and intuitive effort.
After talking with Andrea in my editing group about multi-genre research papers, she mentioned the importance of “reportend,” which according to Webster's is “a repeated or recurrent sound, cadence, word, or phrase that is to be repeated for conformity to a pattern.” I think this is important also in the braided essay. To refer back to Dan’s possible braided essay on baseball, he might strive to incorporate an image that is consistent in his various pieces. He might help keep the reader on track by using sensory imagery to make the reader experience the magic of being on a baseball field on a cool summer evening. Dan could use this imagery in his persuasive piece, his narrative, and his how to. Since they are contrasting pieces that could easily be jumbled, the vivid repetition of imagery might help the reader sense a pattern in the overall essay.
In my case with this essay, I tried to use reportend in each ‘strand.’ For my professional strands I tried to use the term ‘braided essay’ in the first sentence of each segment. Each blog entry is a different sized font and ends with the date. Obviously, with the comments from family and friends, I centered and single spaced them. I tried to make the descriptive pieces especially rich with imagery and details, so the reader can recognize them from the other pieces. For the eulogy segments, I repeated the phrase “if you knew my father.” Overall, I hope these touches give the reader a sense of cohesion.
XLII.
Yesterday (Thursday) Dad and I made an afternoon of it. I was looking forward to this because I was starting to worry about him. He has been taking chemo for his lung cancer for the better part of a year now. The treatments have taken a toll on his energy level. For a man who has worked hard all of his life - and more amazingly -- enjoyed working hard all of his life, not being able to do as much as he used to is a major adjustment. When I talked to him yesterday, he was disgusted that after meeting with the doctor he would have to wear an oxygen tank. Initially, the nurse told him he only had to wear it at night and when he was feeling particular tired or short of breath. However, the man who dropped the tank off told him that he had to wear it all the time. Another burden for Dad to bear. I imagine this was also difficult because Mom had been burdened with the same device before her death.
Luckily, Dad talked to the hospital again and found out that he doesn't have to wear it all the time.
To give him something to do, I suggested he help me move some old junk out of our garage. Delighted, he quickly agreed. So we spent about 10 minutes loading and dumping the junk and several hours driving around visiting.
Again I was shocked by the trivial details we reminisced over -- hauling hay bales on an old back road we were traveling down and blowing out a tire. I only vaguely remember this though because it was after a long hard day of baling hay and all I wanted was to get home. It seemed like we worked on that tire for hours that night and even the next day.
While we were talking about this, Dad said, "You remember why that darn thing took us so long?"
I was clueless.
"It's because Russell (the man from whom we bought the farm and all of our equipment) welded the rim onto the axle."
"What? Why would he do that?"
"The holes on the rim he had didn't match up with the ones on the hay rack, so he just welded it all together. Which would have been so bad, had he put a new tire on the rim. But he used an old worn out one. So instead of just taking off the tire and bringing it to town, we had to get a new tire and put it on the rim!"
I couldn't believe it. I laughed until my side hurt. It was the best moment I had with Dad in quite some time. Nothing is trivial.
In fact, when he dropped me off, he thanked me for a wonderful day. And indeed it was wonderful. Had I been 10 years younger and had Dad been healthier, I would have seen the day as more of an inconvenience. I mean there were other things that I needed to accomplish. But Dad's illness has put my life in perspective. Nothing is trivial. It was one of those rare moments when I really appreciated our time together. I was happy. Better yet, I knew I was happy, and that made it so much more powerful. Friday, October, 2006
XLIII.
For my students this would be a great place to analyze our craft. How do authors decide where to place things? Does it just happen or is it part of a strategy? What are the effects? I would stress to my students that nothing is permanent. They should not be afraid to eliminate a fragment or an entire essay and add something else instead.
The braided essay is just another form for the students to experiment with. However, it is a form that Miller argues mimics life itself for “The world is chaotic, certainly, and always cliched. Face it: our lives are full of stories already told . . . What is new is not what we tell but how we tell it” (21). While researching Morrison’s Paradise for a graduate class, I found a quote from the author herself about her complicated braided form for the novel. She said one reason for formulating it like that was she wanted to mimic how memory works. One moment you might be remembering what you had for dinner last night. That memory might lead you to think about your tenth birthday. You might then remember your uncle who was there. Then your mind flashes to the present and where he is now and what he is doing. In the span of a few seconds, your mind has covered years worth of memories. The braided essay has the power to do that too.
XLIV.
A father, a son, a wheelchair.
I grabbed Dad’s elbow and helped him out of the pickup. He scowled at me like he didn’t need my help. But he didn’t try to tug his elbow away either. I kept my hand on his back and stepped with him into the entry way to the hospital.
“I’ll be right back.”
Thanks to Dad’s newly issued handicapped sticker, I found the nearest parking spot and tried to jog back to the hospital avoiding the icy patches.
I didn’t know what was more shocking - Dad seated in the wheelchair or the fact that he had placed himself in it. Throughout the entire ordeal, Dad fought it tooth and nail. He called me and grumbled for 20 minutes in October when Dr. Koeslaugh suggested he be put on oxygen. He waved me away in November when I grabbed a wheelchair to help him during his chemo treatments. Later still in early December, he tossed a blanket over my head when I insisted on layering him in blankets when he was chilled one night.
“Ready,” Dad said.
“Yep,” I lied and grabbed the handles.
XLV.
I live the braided essay more than ever now. My new family are story tellers too. Their narrative strands, images, voices, perspectives, and fragments are now woven into mine. Though my parents are gone and were not able to witness my wedding, they were still there.
After the wedding, our families gathered around a fire outside our cabins. My uncle, Jim, brought up stories about Mom and Dad. Soon my sister, Barb, was adding to them and intersecting with new stories and memories. KoKo, my step daughter, chimed in with some too. Kristie beamed as she recounted how for the Minnesota Basic Skills Writing Test, Casey chose for the topic “Write about a time someone did something important for someone else” to write about when grandpa Tex gave a hitchhiker a ride and ended up taking him nearly all the way to his destination because they were having such a good conversation. I could only smile at the braided stories and lives.
XLVI.
“If you knew my father, you know how I will grieve for the things that we won’t be able to do together anymore, but that grief pales, absolutely pales, in comparison to the joy and love in all the things that we did together.”
Works Cited
Miller, Brenda. “A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay.” Writing Creative Nonfiction. Ed. Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard. Cincinnati: Story Press, 2001. 14-24.
Miller, Brenda, and Suzanne Paola. Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005.
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