Fridays with my dad

Since my father’s last fall, he had quite a few in the past year, he has a helper at home, and I get to spend Fridays with him. We have quality times together, which are sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding, always inspiring, and sometimes just plain fun. Moments to cherish, for sure. For a year now, I’ve been filming him with my phone camera when he speaks passionately and so eloquently as he does on some subject or another. Mostly his work. My father is an evolutionary biologist and a very prominent one at that. I’m exceedingly proud of my father, which seems silly because it’s his job to be proud of me, but that’s fine because we mutually admire each other. 

What we did today

Today, while I was there, I remembered my first pet. It was a crazy little cat, grey tigerish playful, and had this crazy runaround the house attacks no one could do anything about. Thanks to that cat, I had another first – which was my first broken hand. Running like crazy in one of his freaking attacks, he crossed my path riding my tricycle, just on the top of our spiraling stairs in our San Francisco two-story home, I fell rolling down the stairs, and when I reached the first floor, my hand was broken. Anyway, I asked my dad if he remembered that cat; I wanted desperately to recall the cat’s name, and he said he remembered it, but not the name. Shut, I thought, my mom’s dead, my brother’s dead, neither my father nor I remember it. The name is lost to me forever.

Why we did this

“The more we know about our past, the better we know ourselves. The greater the storehouse of memory, the more complete our personal narrative becomes. Our life begins to feel full and complete and important.” 

Matthew Dicks from the book – Storyworthy