Sappy Reflections...But Perfectly Honest
Of all the people in my life, without a doubt, my father is the one who has had the largest influence. I think my earliest memories with my dad are learning about Native Americans and their dancing. Actually, this is something that I've done since birth. When I was only a couple months old, I was given the Native American equivalent of a baptism as my father performed a celebratory dance around the fire holding me above his head.
Dancing has always been a serious tie to my father. I don't have many distinct memories of my earliest childhood, but some of my most vivid ones were learning to dance with my father and other members of Walden, which was a family therapy community that went camping together every summer for two weeks. I remember the 'magical' fire lighting ceremony and believing that it really was the Great Spirit coming to bless the evening. Everybody would be gathered around the unlit fire, my father would call out to the four winds, having us face in those directions each time, and magically, the fire would light itself. Once I was old enough to have a major role in these performances, I learned that it was a little device my dad made up in order to pour a vial of liquid into a small lid of a chemical powder, causing it to catch fire, lighting the wood that was already soaked in kerosene.
Now here’s the beauty of this family history: we’re not Native American at all. My mother is 100% East Indian, having come to the US when she was 19, and my father is just a generic white-boy mutt from Mt. Clements. Contrary to the norm, my father became interested in Native American culture through his Boy Scout experience as an Eagle Scout. Once he was introduced to them, he joined an organization that taught him their history, songs, and dances. After years of being in this group, he was actually invited to dance in a major powwow, which was a huge honor.
It is in this way that my father has come to pass this legacy onto me. We own authentic costuming, inclusive of a full set of bead work (belt, moccasins, arm bands, choker, sash, and headband), a porcupine head broach, and bustles made with real eagle feathers (which we actually have to own permits for). In my family, I’m the only one to follow in my father’s footsteps on this front. My mother and brother will occasionally watch us dance, if they happen to be in town and free, but they never took a vested interest in it. Why was I different? Maybe I liked to dance, maybe I liked the culture and magic of it, or maybe I just wanted to be like my dad. Who knows?
Regardless of the reasons why I took to the Native American culture, it shaped a lot of my beliefs and my appreciation of the tranquility in nature. In my father’s teachings of the Native American spirituality, he told me about valuing every living thing and how to be very in touch with the world. This mentality was also expanded through our family vacations during the summer, which almost always included camping. While there, I learned to fish, make a fire, cook over it, catch frogs, swim, hike, and enjoy nature for everything it had to offer. Doing this brought me a sense of intimacy with my family and the natural world.
Another thing that I can thank my dad for is my liking of riddles and puzzles. Aside from normal jigsaw puzzles, I liked to build stuff with Legos, blocks, or whatever else worked at the time, and he would often build them with me. In these instances, the story my father likes to tell is how he’d build stuff with me, but in the end, always feel “rather pathetic because whatever I built was better than he did.” This was a normal occurrence ever since I was old enough to build anything at all.
Once I became a touch older, my dad always would often hit me up with all sorts of jokes/riddles that I would have to figure out. He always had such a look of satisfaction on his face when he had me stumped. And of course, any clues he would give would be abstract or cryptic in nature. The earliest version of this would be our annual Easter egg hunt. My brother and I would each have an Easter basket and a set number of eggs. We would divide the house in half, and I being the oldest, would always have the more challenging hiding places. Throughout the morning, my dad would walk back and forth between my brother and me with a smug grin on his face, especially when we came close to finding one but didn’t quite see it. When we got a little older, and didn’t care for the actual eggs as much, we upgraded to plastic eggs with candy or money inside them, and the one egg with the $5 in it would come as a scavenger hunt. The egg would be so well hidden that we would inevitably find the egg with the riddle inside before finding the actual cash. One that I distinctly remember was, “Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth are the tragic few. If you find the fourth, your prize will await you.” After some thought, and breaking out the Shakespeare anthology, I figured out that it was inside of the Othello board game.
Growing up a little bit more, my dad and I upgraded to playing chess. At first, the games would go by rather quickly because I wasn’t that good, and although he would teach me, he wouldn’t just let me win. However, when I became better at chess, the games started to last forever. Whenever I had him in a little bind, he’s think about his move long and hard until he was positive he was making the best move he could. This got really frustrating, and on a few occasions cost me the game, because by the time he finally moved, I was so anxious to get on with the game that I just moved without really thinking about what he did. I actually remember one specific instance where I was up on him by a couple pieces, and made a solid move on him; he then proceeded to think about his next move for an hour and a half, frustrating me to no end. When he finally moved, I was so irked that I just started moving without thinking, and before I knew it, I had lost the game… let’s just say that I’ve learned to bring a book or something along whenever we play chess. To give you a basic idea of how much free time I had during these games, I once managed to sort and alphabetize all of my magic cards, numbering 1500+. With all of these things being the case, I most assuredly gained a sense of patience, developed my sense of humor, love for puzzles, riddles and games.
These are just a few of the mannerisms that I can identify myself with my dad. However, the largest, and most obvious, is my choice of profession. He is an English professor at O.C.C., and I am now a high school English teacher. What’s more is that I’ve adapted his procrastinating nocturnal lifestyle. When I was little, I would always see him grading through all hours of the night, taking naps, and working in the morning when I got up for school. Sometime in my high school career, I started following that pattern too. I would write papers at the last minute, grading at the last minute…just about everything at the last minute (you can guess when this was written). If there’s anything I can do first, like cleaning my room and doing laundry, I’ll do it…I never said we were perfect.
Now that I’m finishing up my masters, I’m making it possible to become a college professor as well. Looking at my father’s choice of being a college professor instead of a high school teacher, the greatest benefit is obvious to me. Because he taught college, he was able to teach at night, thus enabling my mom to work during the day while he took care of my brother and me. Then, while he went to work at night, my mother would take care of us, minimizing our need for child care, giving us all the parental love and support they possibly could. My parents did an exceptional job raising me and my brother. They were physically and emotionally present in our lives to make that impact. Our values, beliefs, confidence, and emotional health are all rooted in their parenting. I learned the true meaning and value of family and generosity and developed a sense of responsibility to myself and others. Every time I look at the troubles in another family, I count myself incredibly lucky to have the upbringing that I did.