A Match

I just want to thank everyone that read my last post. I’m a little annoying right now because I’m reading lots of memoirs. I just finished one called, “Lifesaving” by Judith Barrington. In it, the author writes of how she came to terms with the drowning deaths of her parents when she was a young adult. I really liked it and so of course I have to practice at my own memoirs. My interesting material comes from my crazy parents. I hope I don’t come across as too depressing because generally I feel pretty happy and blessed. Here is a new one I wrote about my dad. Read on if you feel the need to read a Melissa memoir and know more than you want to about my past dysfunctional family life.

My dad was raised on a dairy farm in Lehi. He lived in one house with his parents and three brothers. Dad’s grandparents lived in a separate house on the same farm. My dad’s grandfather and father worked together to support both families. When Dad was five years old he found a match in his grandfather’s washhouse. Being a little boy, the match stirred his childish curiosity. He knew enough not to get caught with a match, so he stole away to a far corner in Grandfather’s barn. The new barn was recently completed and smelled of fresh cedar and paint. It was a symbol of Grandfather’s recent success and held the bounty of crops from the season including alfalfa, corn feed, and bales upon bales of dry, yellow hay. Dad struck the match and watched in horror as his small experiment quickly began to consume Grandfather’s crops. Dad ran to the house yelling that the barn was on fire. The fire department was called. However, by the time they arrived the barn, the crops, the hard work of a season, and the financial success of a year were gone. There was no insurance policy on either the barn or the crops.

Being a little boy, Dad would have had no understanding of what it meant not to have insurance. He couldn’t comprehend the now wasted hours upon hours that made up months of hard manual labor in the fields. He couldn’t have known the worry that farmers tend over the elements of rain, sun, and frost and their effects on their financial future. What did he know of the satisfaction his grandfather felt when the new barn was finished; perhaps a symbol of what should finally be awarded an old man after a lifetime of sweat and worry? Though Dad sensed he’d done something horrific, he could not fathom the devastation he’d brought to his family. He waited timidly for his punishment.

The punishment was an order to his bedroom to wait for his father and grandfather to talk with him. I can see him in my mind waiting. Perhaps nervous tears fell from his bright blue eyes down his chubby pink cheeks. Maybe he wrung his little hands and pulled his blankets around him for comfort. His father, Odell, came in first and simply shook his head in sorrow and said, “my boy, my boy.” Grandpa came in last and simply knelt at Dad’s bedside and wept. What punishment, after all, could either of these men mete out to a little boy who knew nothing of the consequences of what he’d done?

Now my dad sits in a different room, an old man with kidney and congestive heart failure, not understanding consequences in the same way the little boy version of the same man did not understand. Perhaps ignorance, selfishness, stubbornness, or maybe a touch of mental illness was the match that ignited the inferno that was a trail of broken marriages and hearts. I can’t pretend to know what occurred in his mind. Like the new barn that held the bounty of a season’s labor, my dad once held the confidence of his wife, children, friends, and relatives. He was my daddy who knew everything and fixed everything and was never late to pick me up from school. I didn’t even know until it was gone that Dad held a big piece of my security in this world. He’ll never know what it took to grapple for that back on my own. I see myself stooping near his death bed in my mind. I play the role of my great grandfather. Like Great Grandfather, I’ve felt acutely the pain and consequences of his rash and accidental decisions. I know there are no words that could bring understanding and repentance. I bow my head and weep for what is lost. My daddy, my daddy.

Jeff read this and said it sounds like I’m in a depression. I’m certainly not just trying my hand at memoirs. I know from my reading that they may come across as depressing because one can’t always find the meaning of something right away. It sometimes could take a lifetime. Maybe I’ll write something happy next time.