What influence has the person had on you? How can you illustrate that influence in a way that is understandable and enjoyable?
Good luck!
Thursday, March 03, 2011
More Narrative Essay Work
Either a new piece, part of a piece, revision of a piece. Whatever you have, here's the place to put it for review in next week's class. Remember your focus, no matter what it is, needs to be on your mind as you write. We should be sure exactly why you are telling us (showing us) something.
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Another demonstration of narrative writing, using my Uncle Gough again as my subject. I'm trying to tie his influence on me to actions of his that will help readers better understand his character.
My uncle taught me a few things. I learned to respect the food I ate one day, the day he asked me to do the unthinkable—kill a chicken for dinner.
“Where do you suppose that chicken you eat comes from?” he’d asked me.
So off I marched, hatchet in one hand and a squawking, struggling chicken in the other. At the table that night I ate the bird and have never forgotten what happens, millions upon millions of times each day, to some creature or another.
Farming is a cruel life, sometimes. After a lifetime on the prairie, at an elevation of 900 meters above sea level, without wearing sunglasses on the brightest summer days, he can barely see through cataract ravaged eyes.
In his younger days, his eyes were sharp and focussed on the landscape. He’d spy the tiniest owl on a fence post, the farthest antelope bounding across the prairie, the faintest car on the horizon. “That’s one of the McFall’s coming down the road,” he’d say as I sat beside him in his battered Dodge Fargo wondering how he could possibly discern a colour, a make of car from that distance.
My uncle loved to look out to the horizon. We could always see something against the sky out there at the edge of things. It makes me feel small, closer to the ultimate mysteries, when I can see the curve of the earth as I walk across the prairie.
—244 words
My father was no stranger to pain and hardship. Originating from the village-town of Ovaro, nestled in the Italian Alps, he was born into a very poor family without a father’s influence. His childhood development was, no doubt, impacted by the Second World War, a period of time that would see him struggle for survival in a war-torn environment of starvation, fear and death.
All this he had to overcome and this may have given him the strength and courage to leave everything behind and start all over in a brand new country, with brand new ideas and a brand new hope for a better life for him and his future family. Only the brave and courageous venture forth into a strange wilderness of opportunity called Canada, and my father took it on with all his heart.
My father was not one for expressing his emotions or feelings openly. When I was a small bambino (child), I can still remember him coming home after a hard 12 hours of working in the wood mill, smelling like sawdust and sweat. He wouldn’t even have the chance to take off his dirty boots when my sister and I would jump all over him giving him big hugs almost knocking him over.
We didn’t know it at the time, we just knew he wasn’t around a lot and we missed him, but he did it all for us. I didn’t realize until I was much older and could understand him from a mature perspective. This was his way of showing his love for his family.
-262 words
My Uncle
“Uncle Pooh, would you draw me the hare and the tortoise?” I sit with my uncle and watched him opening his sketch note book.
“Sure, why not,” Uncle Pooh 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. That was usually how our sketching “party” started.
“ I want a flying dragon,” one fat boy yelled.
“I want a blond princess,” the other little girl begged.
“Ok, ok. But I have to finish this first.” Then Uncle Pooh 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.
The sketching party dismissed after my mother calling me for dinner. Uncle Pooh and I went home. It was Saturday evening, the day that Uncle Pooh usually visited my family every week. Sitting by dining table, I asked my uncle why I can’t draw so well as him. “You don’t have to,” Uncle Pooh smiled, “ everybody gets some talent. I know you can do something that I can’t.”
“But I am good at nothing,” I whined.
“You never know until you know it.” He padded my shoulder.
“and it is nothing wrong to be not so good at something,” he added.
Uncle Pooh was a high school teacher, and he taught Chinese that time. Unlike my mother, who was always scolding my awful handwriting and nonsense of my writing pieces, my uncle never judged me about anything. That was why I liked him so much. I didn’t remember since when Uncle Pooh not visiting us, then I asked my mom why he was not coming. “your uncle is busy now,” my mom said, “ he is getting married soon.” Then she ruffled my hair , ” I can’t believe he is getting married. In my mind, he is always my younger brother,” she sighed dearly.
I didn’t see my uncle very often since then. But I pinned his sketch to my bedroom wall. I often looked at the hare and tortoise when I thought about him. As I stepped into my high school years, there were a lot of competition occurring in my class. Boys and girls strived to get better marks in order to get into a good university. Sometimes I fell behind in math, sometimes in English. But I learned to bear it, and never complained. Whenever I got low mark, I would stare at the tortoise and comforted myself: “it is nothing wrong to be not so good at something.” Then I moved on.
Many years later, when I met Uncle Pooh at my mother’s 70th birthday, he was already retired. To my surprise, he never changed his job as a teacher and he never switched in his life. I had already switched my job twice that time. I thought it is good to realize my personal value. When we chatted about this, Uncle Pooh said,
” I see my value at my position, why should I switch?”
“Do you know you could be a great artist?” I yelled.
“ I am great to my children and my grand children, isn’t it good?” he replied,
“ and I am happy to be not so good,” he smiled to me.
Somehow, the tortoise image popped up in my mind. I laughed and switched the topic. Now I realize my Uncle, as ordinary as he is, has higher realm of thought than I do. Neither conceited nor discouraged, he lives his happy and simple life. Nothing could bother him. I wish I could be just like him—happy and simple.
So this is my Uncle—my cool uncle.
--698words
A Gift from Aunt Betsy
“Why do you have so many books?” my 7-year old inquisitive mind wanted to know.
Aunty Betsy laughed. “Why do you think, Elaine?”
“I dunno, because you like them?” I said.
She laughed some more. “Well, yes. I just love to read!” she said, smiling and wiping her hands on her apron. “Would you like to borrow one?” she asked me with her eyes opened wide.
I was a bit surprised. “You’d let me borrow one?” I asked her.
“Su-u-ure!” she said as she walked to one of her many shelves. “Now, let me see. . .”
I stared all round the room in awe. I had never seen so many books in one place before! (Well, just our school library). But this was a house. There had to be hundreds of books here! Shelves upon shelves of them. . .
“Ah! How about this one? ‘Black Beauty’ by Anna Sewell.”
Aunt Betsy handed me the most beautiful book I’d ever seen. It had a colourful picture on the front of a woman and a lovely black horse in a countryside. The spine of the book was all in gold with patterns of squiggly black lines and flowers.
“Wow, for me?” I asked.
Aunt Betsy put one hand on my shoulder. “Yes, my dear, for you. This was one of my favourite books when I was around your age. This book, you can keep!”
“Wow!” was all I could say. That day, I carried that book home, holding it in my hands like it was gold.
Aunt Betsy was one of my favourite people growing up. She wasn’t even really my aunt. She was more like the neighbourhood kids’ “honorary aunt”. All the kids on my block absolutely loved her. You were always welcome at Aunt Betsy’s home. Her door was always open; kids would come and go. Sometimes we’d just drop in to say hello to her and play in her yard. Many times we went after school for milk and freshly baked cookies. “Shh!” she’d say to us. “Don’t tell your moms, ok?” She’d spoil us rotten with her baking. Some of my favourite memories were walking through her front door to the scent of her latest creation wafting through the air.
But the biggest impact Aunt Betsy made on me was giving me a love for reading. Oh, how she loved her books. Many days, she’d come out to her front yard and call out to us kids playing in the neighbourhood:
“Story time!”
“Ya-a-ay!” we all screamed excitedly.
“I wonder what she’s going to read to us this time?” my best friend, Nancy, asked me as we abruptly ended our hopscotch game and went running.
“I don’t know,” I said, all giggly. “But I hope it’s Cinderella again.”
(cont'd...)
“Naw, I hope it’s ‘The Voyages of Sinbad’ again!” yelled Tommy, slashing through the air with an imaginary sword.
Sometimes there were six to eight of us all huddled up together in her small living room and Aunt Betsy would be nestled in her favourite arm chair. Then the magic started. She began to read.
“Once upon a time,” she half-whispered, “in an encha-a-nted castle . . . “and soon we were transported to another place and time. She thrilled us with her different character voices. One time, she was the young girl, Dorothy, “G-guess we’re not in Kansas, anymore, Toto” and the next moment, she was that scary, old witch, cackling,“Ah-ha-ha-ha, my pret-tyy!” Sometimes she would use our own names in the story, “Elaine was a beau-ti-ful princess!” or “that fearsome pirate, John!” much to our delight and laughter.
We would sit so still, entranced, just listening, and being swept off to faraway places like Peter Pan’s Never, Never Land or floating down the Mississippi on Huckleberry Finn’s raft. I laugh now remembering her re-enacting the sword fight scene between Peter Pan and Captain Hook. She even bent up a wire hanger and hid it up the sleeve of her sweater, pretending she had a “hook” for a hand!
At that time, it amazed me how she read from so many different books, never seeming to run out of stories. Then one day, I asked her about that and she took me to another room in her house. I remember the first time I saw those walls lined with shelves and shelves of books. I was fascinated. My mouth dropped open as I looked all around me. I felt so privileged and special, because she was showing this to me and only me.
I guess she knew back then I had an affinity for reading just like her. I think she somehow knew it even before I did. Then she gave me one of her books and I knew I was hooked the moment I started to read,“The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it”. Before I took it home that day, she wrote on the inside cover, “For my darling, Elaine. May you grow to love reading as much as me! Lots of love, Aunt Betsy.”
Now I have my own room full of shelves filled with books. And though Aunt Betsy is long gone, and I’m all grown up, I still keep her book, “Black Beauty”, proudly on display. It’s a constant reminder to me of life’s inspirations and the amazing places they can come from, even when you’re just seven years old. Aunt Betsy not only inspired my love for reading but, later, to become a writer. In fact, in the first book I ever published, I dedicated it to her –
“For my darling Aunt Betsy, and the gift she gave me.”
-956 words
Character: My father
I recall my “Tatang Nazario” (father) loves to sing “Obladi oblada” while cleaning his hammer, saw and wood plainer. He’ll get a towel and polish them to prevent tarnish. This is his ritual before starting work.
My father has five siblings and they originally came from one of the villages in northern, Philippines. He lived there with his family until he’s 25 years old. His parents trained him to work in the farm: plowing the fields, planting and harvesting rice including raising pigs, chickens and other animals. At that time, my “lola and lolo” (my father’s mother and father) were comfortable of how they live that tends most of their children didn’t aspire to go to college. He got married to my inang (mom) at the age of 26 years old. They were blessed seven children. My father anticipated that a job opportunity in the village was lesser, so he decided moving us from a village to one of the busiest metropolitan cities called “Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.” The new place he selected was still surrounded with a farm about four hectares, so he continued working. My mom, my siblings and I helped him and adapted his hard work to survive life. I can see by my own eyes that, my father was absolutely a handy smart man, a jack of all trades and leads life by his good examples.
One day, he was making a pig pen while singing “Obladi, oblada.” Out of some pieces of woods, bamboo trees, and bolts and nuts he could make it. I was playing closely to where he was working and suddenly stated to me that, “My daughter when you grow up and are ready to work, work as if you are working with God, be true to yourself and in what you do, give your best to it, and your work will always protect you wherever you go. I was young then at that time, but those words with wisdom instilled into my mind.
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 proved 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 family. We stay and live there whenever we are on vacation. Actually, all of my siblings -- he made them their own houses.
Five years ago, our desire to land as immigrants to Canada had been 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 including 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.
658 words ---
My Name Seal and My Grandpa
I have a special name seal made by my grandpa. It was put in a black seal box when I received it. As I open the box, the memory of him vividly flashes just like an old movie replaying before my eyes. I'll never forget this nice bald senior in white shirt and dark grey pants.
He actually was my father's uncle. Until his brother (my old grandfather whom I never seen) died, he married his sister-in-law, my grandmother, and that invited gossip from neighbours and acquaintances—I heard from my mother when I grew up. I don't know what kind of job he exactly did, yet I know he was good at calligraphy and seal carving, even though he didn't have a good education when he was young during the time of Japanese rule. I often saw him sitting at his desk on the corner of the room and concentrating on his work from his back.
Every time when I visited my grandparents (their house was just one block from ours,) he always smiled to me and nicely called me nick name—Olive (the name is from the cartoon "Popeye the Sailor") but without saying something else. He was a quiet person.
When I was eight or nine, once, before the Lunar New Year, I send a message to my grandmother for my mom. At that time, he was writing spring couplets with Chinese brush, which were written on red papers and pasted on or two-sides and upside of the doors. His beautiful writing and the lines of poetry attracted me.
"Can I try?" I asked. He taught me how to hold and use the brush properly and write the Chinese character "福" (pronounces "fu", means fortune) on a diamond shape of red paper.
I was so afraid of making mistakes. "Don't be afraid. Just follow my steps," he encouraged me. Of course, my writing was quite terrible. I pouted.
"Nothing will be perfect at the first time. It's your first red couplet." He let me do some more. I did get better. Since then I fell in love with calligraphy that also made me write a fine hand.
When I was eighteen, my mom handed me my bankbook and a name seal. That meant I was old enough and able to manage my own bank account. The beautiful seal characters of my name reminded me of him. My mom told me that my sister and I were the last two members in our family who got the name seal he made. She had kept them for my sister and me for many years.
I actually never know his name. In my culture, it's impolite to call a senior's name. My mom and dad called him uncle, and my little aunts and little uncle called him "ah-pa" (father); however, he is always my "ah-gong" (grandfather). He never angered about the gossip; he always chose the one he loved, and the things he loved to do, as well as never hurt anyone. He always smiled.
After I graduated, I once worked as an accounting assistant for two years, but I wasn't really happy with the job. I wondered if I'd like to be an accountant as my career. Although my mom told me artists were hard to make lots of money, and my father said that I should do a popular job. But, what did I really like to do in my life? My grandpa had shown me as I looked at my name seal and thought of him. I changed my career path twenty years ago even though it was not easy in the beginning since I was unemployed for almost a half year. I really felt happy when I was doing graphic design and illustration work, and now I still do.
--633 words
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