A position I recently applied for required a 500 word essay. The prompt: “address an event that happened in your childhood that shaped how you define yourself today.” I had so much fun writing it, that I thought I’d share! Love you, Dad.
As I have grown as a writer over the years, I’ve come to find that my writing tends to revolve more around “character” than “plot”. I have an incurable fascination with people. I love observing their quirks, idiosyncrasies, tendencies, and interactions with the world around them. In turn, I can’t help but sneakily and “accidentally” interpret the prompt to address an event that happened in my childhood as an opportunity to highlight an individual who was very much an event himself – turning every day of my childhood into a grand party.
Enter, the one and only, Brent Martin – the epitome of eccentricity, creativity, and outside-the-box thinking – otherwise known as “Dad.”
My dad has the uncanny ability to take a situation or circumstance that is seemingly ordinary and turn it into an epic adventure. Now, I realize that most daughters think their daddy is the cat’s pajamas, but I would argue that I have more reason to think so than most.
One of my favorite moments with my dad took place when I was in elementary school, in the backyard of the fixer-upper my family had just moved into. It was a fairly typical backyard – grass, a few scraggly trees, a couple of old stumps – but while the rest of us saw the yard for its reality, my dad saw it for its possibility.
Thus began the crazy project that about half of my tiny hometown now knows as “The Rabbit Tunnel.” With the help of my sister and me, my dad constructed a ten-foot, underground tunnel, connecting the two dead stumps we had hollowed out – the perfect runway for a couple of rabbits, don’t you think? So, while other families kept their bunnies in normal wire cages from pet stores, we kept ours in a homemade underground tunnel with “rabbit lookout points” carved out of two rotten tree stumps.
Then there was the time when he loaded up the ol’ Volkswagen Vanagon and drove us two hours in the middle of the night, just for an Original Glazed at our favorite doughnut shop. Or the time when he took our giant Golden Retriever rafting down the Yakima River, and ended up straddling the hairy beast on a tiny backup inner tube most of the way because the raft popped.
The levity, absurdity, and imagination my dad has brought to my growing-up experience has shaped me in life altering ways. I truly believe that our potential to live creatively, wildly, and fully as human beings is dependent upon the way we view the world around us. On one hand, my dad could have chosen to see two dead stumps, a doughnut shop that was out of our reach, and an overweight dog that would never make it on such a cheaply made raft. Instead, he chooses each day to see life as a grand party, an epic adventure, and a story to be told – paving the way for the rest of us to believe the same.
Zealous Feet 