6/4/19

“Lopate yourself” had a message to young writers to basically understand that you must define yourself when writing about yourself. That “I” is a complex subject that you know all about, but the reader doesn’t, and must be informed. I plan to write about my experience being in a house fire. I’ll describe my childhood and home life and the significance of that house.

Timeline of my life

August 1994: I was born

Spring 2000: I started playing baseball. This is significant because the teammates and bonds created there have been lifelong and the lessons learned in baseball have been instrumental. 

Winter 2004: my grandmother passed away. She was very close to me and was a big part of my childhood and development. 

Summer 2005: I fell out of a treehouse and hit my head losing consciousness and getting a pretty bad concussion.  Not the most significant thing but very memorable. 

Spring 2010: Joined the cross country and track teams. Running has been instrumental in my life and I absolutely love running. 

Summer 2011: I was in a house fire sustaining 2nd and 3rd degree burns. This completely changed my life and caused me to better myself. 

Spring 2012: I graduated high school. I thought I was done with school forever! But here I am now. 

Summer 2012: I shipped off to basic training a month after graduating high school. The start of my seven years in the Army. Has defined my adult life. 

Spring: 2013: I went to my first duty station in Seoul, South Korea. My first time leaving the country. Fell in love with traveling and trying foods. Met so many interesting people from all over the world. 

January 2019: I started school at the university of Alabama. Has been trying and a struggle but also very eye opening. 

Swimming Underwater with John (6/5/19)

“What I want to know most of all is what John is dreaming of now, but he cannot open his head to me. His head is the treasure trove of the pillows.” Swimming Underwater with John tells the story of having a brother with severe autism. The struggles of just wanting to know what, or if, John is having complex thoughts, what the strings of words he says could mean. It was effective is describing the good and the bad of taking care of a family member in that situation and getting the reader to empathize with someone in that situation.

My Great-Grandpa (6/5/19)

Sitting on the back-porch under the summer sun with a glass of sweat tea in your hand listening to the lyrics of “Glory” being perfectly sung out all-be-it in a cracked voice of a 96 year old man. My great-grandpa loved singing his entire life. He had five daughters including my nana and he sung them to sleep every night. Every family gathering “his babies” would ask him to sing them a song and he would always acquiesce to a request from them. “Come to this fountain so rich and sweet. Cast your poor soul at thy Savior’s feet. Plunge in today and be made complete. Glory to… ” He passed away in April of this year after living a long 97 years. He was a hero to a lot of people and had countless grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren. He served in World War 2 in the Navy where he fought against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific. He loved telling me war stories after I came back from Army boot camp and I certainly loved listening. There’s a thing or two you can learn from the wisdom of an old man. He passed in his own bed surrounded by his five daughters who sung him to sleep for his final slumber, a nice send-off for all his nights of singing to them.

Gaga: Five Foot Two (6/6/19)

Struggle, pain, the search for love. Those are three of the things incredibly common in the human condition and in the Netflix Documentary, “Gaga: Five Foot Two” the audience gets to see that even someone as famous, rich, and successful as Lady Gaga experiences these all-to-common emotions. We see her pain expressed as she records and performs an ode to her aunt Joanne who passed away at a young age. We see her struggle as she faces continual debilitating muscular spasm and pain. We see her fight the sadness of her dealing with break-up. And we see the hard work come to fruition with her performing in the biggest concert in the world, the Superbowl Half Time Show. The documentary was meant to show the humanity of Lady Gaga and it hits the nail on the head with it’s endeavors, background music, and cinematography. Lady Gaga is just as normal as you or I.

Starting Off Right (6/7/19)

My intro definitely leaves something to be desired right now. I think the opening sentence is captivating but its could certainly use some more details and something to get the reader hook-line-and sinker. I think possibly making it a little more personal.

We Could All Use Some Change (6/7/19)

In order to spice of my memoir and get the reader more engaged I’ll be beefing up my intro considerably, possibly adding some details and more personal notes. I’ll be working on my transitions between paragraphs, adding “buzzwords” to let people know we’re talking about something new. And I’ll add more more more detail, because the grader likes them a lot.

Ode to My Father (6/10/19)

“Jacob, I’m so very sorry to be telling you this over voicemail… But your daddy has passed… I’m just so sorry” my grandmother’s voiced cracked as she clearly was struggling to get the words out in a coherent manner. This was how I learned my father had suffered a sudden heart attack and passed away at the young age of 50.

I was born and raised just outside of Atlanta, Georgia to a normal lower-middle class family that was so common in the metro-Atlanta area. My dad, Tony, landscaped for a living which was long, sweaty, back-breaking work. He’d work from sun-up until well past sun-down every day except Sunday to provide what living he could for my older brother, Casey, and I. I’d hear him at the crack of dawn shuffle down the hall, clearly favoring one leg over the other from a knee injury that never quite healed right. He’d make his way to the small kitchen we had and pull the rusty old Maxwell House can he kept refilled of the darkest coffee he could find from the cabinet above the metal sink. He’d scoop four heaping spoonsful of the coffee grinds into the old coffee maker as it roared to life to brew him a pot of fuel for another day of work. This was his morning routine and I can remember it step-by-step now all these years later. I miss the measured, monotonous nature of it. I wish I could hear it one more time. See him at the dinner table one more time (see fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Myers, Jacob. “Dad Eating Dinner.” 2016. JPEG file.

I thought about that routine as I held my phone, stunned at the news of my father’s passing. I had just gotten off work from a long fourteen-hour night shift working in a non-descript windowless building which outside electronics were not allowed in. My family had no way to get into touch with me to tell me the news that my dad had died which led to me being the last person in the family to learn that it happened. A full 12 hours after my brother found him lying on his bedroom floor, in his final slumber is when I got the news. Being in the Army there is protocol for this kind of situation, a Red Cross message. A message that immediately goes to the highest-ranking authority in my command that allows them to be the first to let a soldier know of a family tragedy in the quickest and most sensitive way possible, allows them to rapidly organize transport for the soldier home to be with their family, and to organize arrangements for the remains of the deceased family member. But my family didn’t know any of that, a failure on my part for not informing them. They just kept calling me, texting me, messaging me on various social networking apps hoping that I’d somehow see their words, to no avail.

When I finally received the news I was floored, I felt numb as I mulled over those words. The words that my hero was gone. I was standing in uniform in the hallway of my apartment building vaguely understanding what I was just heard. I remember looking up at a flat-screen TV mounted to the wall on one of the various news networks and the headline saying, “Donald Trump bullies MSNBC host,” the craziness of that headline lost on me in the moment (The Week). I had lost distant family members before and I had lost close friends in the Army, but this felt differently, this felt like a blow to the chest, head, and heart simultaneously.

One thing that kept flashing across my mind as I though about my father was him teaching me to drive. He taught me on my pawpaw’s sprawling South Carolina chicken farm. We were surrounded by rolling green pastures of various types of grasses, the sporadic dilapidated wooden barn, and very little in the way of fencing or trees. In short, the perfect place to learn to drive for a ten-year-old behind the wheel of a rusty old red farm truck with a sticky clutch and years of bumps and bruises in use hauling calves and making roads of it’s own through vegetation of all types. I remember him telling me “alright son, ease off the clutch real lightly and give it a little gas” as I subsequently immediately released the clutch completely and floored the gas pedal, which as you know leads to some of the strangest noises you never want to hear out of an engine, the instant cessation of all proper mechanical function, and a sick lurching of the vehicle. I turned to my dad in horror that I had done some irreparable harm to the old workhorse of a truck, but he just laughed and said “aww give it another shot Jake” immediately assuaging every bit of the apprehension and nervousness I had. And before either of us knew it I was operating it as if I was born to, free behind the wheel, smiling from ear to ear with my dad sitting next to me offering the occasional tip of “a little more here, a little less there” but for the most part letting me learn from my own mistakes.

I initially felt a lot of regret for the missed father’s days, missed birthdays, missed Christmases. But with time this regret fades and love replaces it. I have my memories of baseball tournaments with him, Star Wars marathons, and him teaching me to drive all those years ago. I still miss him, of course, but the man he was, is, lives on in me. He lives on in me in the values he imparted in me. The love of hard work, the dedication to my word, the strive to be a dependable and caring man. Someone who takes care of their family. I hope to end up half the man he was morally and completely the man he was as a father, as a protector, and as a provider.

Works Cited

White House defends Trump’s sexist tweet: ‘He’s a fighter’, https://theweek.com/speedreads/709258/white-house-defends-trumps-sexist-tweet-hes-fighter, Accessed 10 Jun 2019.

Fig. 1. Myers, Jacob. “Dad Eating Dinner.” 2016. JPEG file.

Reflection on my Memoir (6/11/19)

Writing the memoir about my dad was pretty easy with it being such an emotional experience, there being a lot to pull from to talk about. I think my strength was scene-setting and being descriptive. I think my weakness was definitely being open enough emotionally to share the story. I hope it came across well and accurately.