Thursday, February 24, 2011
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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
5 comments:
I wrote the following as a demonstration of showing a character to a reader rather than telling it. This may not be the beginning, but I would definitely include it in any narrative about my uncle.
Warm milk hissed and splashed as it hit the bottom of the galvanized bucket at my uncle’s feet. His hands moved in a steady rhythm as he leaned his shoulder against the flank of the milk cow. Six o’clock on a summer morning, my Uncle Gough was doing chores. We’d already visited the chicken house, collecting warm eggs from the brood boxes, slopped the pigs (giving them a smelly bucket of kitchen scraps), and checked the new calf in the second barn. His day was just beginning.
And, every once in a while he grinned mischievously and, without warning, turned one the cow’s nipples towards the row of cats waiting beside me. The milk shot through the air and into their waiting mouths, one by one. And, then, he would squirt some towards me, often without warning.
His laugh would ring out, a kind of strangled chuckle, and he’d look at me, eyes twinkling, tears running down his face. Yep, that’s my uncle!
I had written this back in September for an assignment called “Describing a Person” I was wondering if I could expand this into an essay…
My Father
Imagine being a young adult and deciding to leave all your possessions, family, friends, culture and language all in the hope of a better quality of life. Only the brave and courageous venture forth into a strange wilderness of opportunity called Canada, and my father was one. A tallish, slim man with a noticeable belly, my father originally came from a very small mountainous town in North-east Italy called Ovaro. He set sail for his new Canadian life in the early 1950s working for the labour camps of Northern Manitoba laying track for the Canadian National Railway. He once told me he endured long, grueling work shifts with swarms of black flies so thick that they got into everything - eyes, ears, hair, food, drink, clothes, sanity.
My father was no stranger to hardships. Growing up without a father with a very poor family, he had lived his childhood years during the Second World War, a period of time that would see him and his family struggle for survival in a war torn environment filled with, death, starvation and fear. This may have given him the strength and courage to leave everything behind and head to a brand new country, starting all over with brand new ideas and a brand new hope for a better life for his future family. I still remember when I was a small bambino he would come home from a hard 14 hour day at the mill, still smelling of sawdust and sweat. He wouldn’t even have the chance to take off his dirty work boots when my sister and I would jump all over him, almost knocking him down and give him a big hug. We didn’t know this at the time, we just missed him, but he was doing it all for us.
-302 words
Character : my uncle
Introduction part:
“Uncle Puh, would you draw me the hare and the tortoise?” I sat with my uncle and watched him opening his sketch note book.
“Sure, why not,” Uncle Puh smiled.
“I want the hare taking a nap under the tree, and the tortoise running in gasps and sweats,” I stared at him impatiently.
“Ok, let’s see what I can draw.”
As my uncle and I sitting and talking at the yard steps, the neighborhood kids found us. They shouted and jumped, joining us with joy.
“ I want a flying dragon,” one fat boy yelled.
“I want a blond princess,” the other little girl beggared.
“Ok, ok. But I have to finish this first.” Then he started sketching. A moment later, I saw a couple of black droplets splashing out from the tortoise’s head, and cloudy bubbles jetted from its mouth. Right following that, I saw a drowsy hare leaning on the tree trunk with a bunch of little Z letters floating on its nose. Wow, this was better than I expected, I jumped up and grabbed the sheet. “This is mine,” I shouted and couldn’t help being smug.
You see, that was my cool uncle--Uncle Puh. He was a high school teacher, now retired. When He was a single man, my uncle visited my family every weekend. He liked to socialize with kids, he often sat at the yard steps with me and other kids, chatting, sketching, and playing Harmonica. We were always amazed by his outstanding talents.
--258words
Now that I have my owned family, my father asked me, “When are you going to have your own house here in the Philippines?” “Well, we are thinking of building it if we have the budget.” “O, you will have money to be able to have your own house”. He said, “I am a foreman carpenter, I will manage everything just for you to have a nice house.” My father started proving his skills again to me that he could make a house from nothing to something. He got all his carpentry tools and hummed “Obladi, oblada,” then he called the other carpenters to help him. He asked an architect to make the plan, but he was the ones who estimated the construction materials from top to bottom of the 2-storey house. He managed it well until finally he constructed a sturdy house for my husband and I. We stay and live there whenever we are on vacation. Actually, all of my siblings -- he made them their own houses.
Years have past, our desire to land as immigrants to Canada was granted; however, my father died at 82 years old with cardio vascular attack. Whenever I heard that song over the radio “Obladi, oblada” being played and looked at his carpentry tools, pens with pigs and chickens and farm plantations, it always reminds me of my father’s legacy. I give credit to our God Almighty for giving me a father who has shown me his loving ways, love of work, principles, disciplines, convictions and his valuable advices that I treasure all my life and that, I can pass to my children. Without his faith in God and endless guidance being passed to me, I would not be a better person and would not have achieved anything. To you my dear father from your loving daughter, thank you for your endless love, support and encouragement in the realization of my goals and dreams.
679 words ---
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