How to be your Father

The other day I was organizing my office closet and stumbled across the following, written in my handwriting:

How to be Dad

-sing bless this house everywhere you go

-pray the rosary with mom

-dress up in crazy costumes as often as possible

-knock yourself out to make xmas special

-say your favorite phrase over and over, ad nauseum. but mean every word.

I stared at this sheet of paper for a long time before I realized what it was. When I moved to North Carolina six years ago, I was between novel contracts and had some rare spare time on my hands, so I decided to work on the memoir I'd long wanted to write. Not knowing where to begin, I bought a book called Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer. This is one of my absolute favorite How-To books, not only for a memoir writer but for a novelist as well, because it delves into how to structure a book in a way that captivates and keeps the reader reading. I had a couple of months to play with my memoir, doing many of the exercises in the book designed to help me remember the events and people and emotions of my life. Then I got another contract (thank God) and set the memoir aside.

So here in front of me was one of Tristine's exercises: In order to paint a portrait of a "character" in the memoir, ask yourself 'how to be' that person.  Try this exercise with one of your parents or a sibling or another important person in your life. You'll get something different than if you just try to describe that person. I can almost guarantee that you'll tap into deeper emotions.

My dad died ten years ago at the age of 90. He often walked around our house singing Bless this house, oh lord we pray, in a resonant bass. But he was a school principal, and I heard from a friend who taught at his school that he also walked through the halls of his school singing this song. (I don't think this would fly in public school in 2011!). I could just picture this gentle man, so comfortable in the school he loved, filling the halls with his song.

At night, I'd hear him and my mother praying the rosary together in their bedroom, but despite his religiosity (he attended mass every morning), he and my mother were playful and actually a little randy, putting on risque skits at social events and taking any opportunity to play dress up.  With four kids, we didn't have much money but he always made sure there were tons of gifts under the tree on Christmas morning, because he'd shop the sales late at night on Christmas Eve. 

His favorite saying was "true happiness comes from helping others," and he said it so often that our eye-rolling muscles got plenty of exercise. But really, he was right wasn't he? And wasn't he the guy who gave me that book, So You Want to be a Social Worker when I was a kid, guiding me into my pre-novelist, "helping others" profession?

Give it a try. Pick someone important from your life and ask yourself how to be that person. You just might learn something about yourself in the process. And you'll get a teeny little part of your memoir written while you're at it!