The Hardest Thing

So, in an attempt not to become a Maddy-sized puddle on the floor, I am going to trick myself by talking about English.

As an English major, I have spent my fair share of time learning about Legends. As defined by Wikipedia (can you tell I’m a college student?) “A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude.”

That is just a fancy way of saying that Legends are stories that no one can prove are true, but no one can prove that they are false, and so they exist, told over and over again until everyone knows them. There are famous legends: Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, The Fountain of Youth, Robin Hood; but the most famous legend is that of Ron Tucky.

My dad was a legendary dad. Everyone who knew him had a story to tell, and even those who didn’t know him personally had told enough stories about him that he became a legend unto himself. At school, my friends have all come to know my dad through my stories of him. They know that he used to send my Christmas Thank You cards with whatever money he had in his pockets at the time. They knew that he would often stay out all night playing cards at the local casino, giving me the curfew “before I come home,” which meant anywhere from 4am-12pm. My friends knew that he had fought in ‘Nam and spent as much time over there as he could running scams to make him more money.

With all of these stories, it’s easy to see my dad as larger than life. Some of the stories are just verging on unbelievable, but knowing my dad, I believe that they were true. He did so much in his life, and for all of the stories that I know, there are hundreds more out there that I fear I will never find out.

But my dad wasn’t just about the big actions that ended in legendary tales. He was about the little things more often than not. He would get food for all of us at home, setting out “appetizers” and making sure everyone had a little “nosh.” He would cut out stories in the newspaper that we might find interesting and leave them for us to read. I almost never read them, but now I wish I had kept every single one.

My dad went to all of my shows at Rainbow and couldn’t wait to see where I would go to college. He wouldn’t have cared if I had gone to Harvard or CSN, whatever I chose he would’ve been the biggest fan of. There was nothing that Tyler or I could do that he wouldn’t have supported. No matter what we were interested in, he wanted to be a part of it in any way that he could.

This past year I took a Modern Prose class, and part of the syllabus was a portfolio of our own original work. It could be anything that we wanted to do, and at the beginning of the semester I had no idea what I wanted to work on. The first part of the class was an entire unit on war, and I became inspired by Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. After hearing stories about my dad in Vietnam for most of my life, I decided that I could take them and work them into a collection of short stories, fictionalizing his experience but using the most legendary details that I had been told.

I did this and turned in a portfolio of 6 stories. It was titled, Uphill Both Ways, a collection of short stories inspired by my father. My dad was the biggest advocate of my writing, and yet I never told him about this project. I guess I intended to, but I was worried about what he might say. I wasn’t sure whether or not he would be alright with me doing this, so I wanted to give myself time to go back and edit the stories and really polish them before I showed them to him.

I realize now that this was ridiculous. My dad loved my writing and was always trying to show it to anyone who could read. I’m sure that he would have been thrilled to read my stories, and now I regret that he will never get to read them.

When I was little my dad used to call me Blondie. As I got older, the nickname started to bother me and I would complain about it until he stopped. Now, there isn’t a sound in the world that I want more than his voice calling me Blondie one more time.

I love you dad.