I had written a scene in which Howard and a love interest (presumably Future Me) were sitting at a café in London. In the scene, he stops mid-sentence and looks wistfully towards the Eiffel Tower (because I have always been really and truly terrible at geography). Future Me asks him what’s wrong, and Fictional Howard explains that it was always difficult for him to see the Eiffel Tower…. because his brother had jumped from it to his death.
END SCENE.
This is all I can remember, sitting here at my well-worn keyboard nearly 40 years later – at least about the story. I had been obsessed with books (and British pop bands) all of my conscious life, and I had already decided that A) I wanted to be in a British pop band, and B) I was a writer.
I took those pages I was so proud of, and I showed them to my dad, the first writer I ever knew in real life. I watched him as he worked to decipher my curlicue pre-teen cursive and keep a neutral expression, scratching his beard and nodding slightly. He handed the blue-lined loose-leaf pages back to me after a time, but he did not smile.
He said, quite simply, “It’s a good start, honey.”
What I wanted him to say was something along the lines of, “MY DAUGHTER IS BRILLIANT!” And then lift me up and swing me around like he did when I was little and laugh and laugh because MY, HOW DARLING.
My dad lightened a lot of things in life, even the big bad ugly stuff. He sat with a relaxed expression and folded hands as my mother tore him to shreds nearly every Sunday, and then he went out back and grilled dinner for his family, as if such behavior was perfectly acceptable. He expressed joy and delight over the simple things, even as “final notice” envelopes occasionally arrived from the electric and gas companies . He laughed directly in the face of death and tragedy, inappropriately and with great projected resolve that ALL WAS WELL. Everything was always okay no matter what, and he made sure his kids knew it.
But he did not run past the fact that my first attempt at writing was imperfect, and that had an enormously positive impact on a very deep level – maybe because it was so out of character. I felt like he took me seriously, for the first time. He gave me kind truth so that I could expand into that awkward space between little kid and grown up. His reaction to my first shared attempt made me feel recognized; it was meaningful and loving because it was real.
Dad could always dig up a shiny gem – even in a pile of shit – but his gentle, honest words that day were sugar-free. They let me know I was on the right path, that I had more to learn, and that I should keep going. Who would I have become without that nudge? I’m grateful to never know.
P.S. I did, eventually, figure out that the Eiffel Tower was not in London. I would, however, be completely lost without Google Maps – geography is still not my strongest subject.
Categories: Musings, Uncategorized
Kelly Wade 