The following is a draft of my memoir as I have it right now. At the end, I have posted my thoughts after my peer review session with Benny.
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His hands were working, a knife whittling away the skin of a potato. An open-air pan sizzled in the mid-summer heat, bringing with it the smell of freshly chopped onions. I sat on the edge of a dusty brown cooler, the only bench one could find in the rural hillside kitchen of West Virginia.
My grandfather had gone out to the garden that morning, taking me with him. He pointed, his fingers dappled with sun spots, cracked and hardened, baked under the Southern heat, to the pink star-shaped flowers as we passed them by, though I do not now recall their names. He revealed to me the beginnings of cucumbers hanging beneath broad, flat leaves and the still chartreuse tomatoes, bulbous on the vine. He grabbed from his garden, his hands tearing and breaking the herbs he needed, parsely, thyme, basil, and filled his fists with the green stalks, then mine. We walked, slowly drawing ourselves up the dirt road, back to the kitchen. He did not possess the same supple knees and boundless energy I did at eight.
My father did not perceive the rolling landscape with the same roving curiosity that was present in my own wide blue eyes. His expression was one of boredom, and annoyance, as he waved his hand in the air, a white flag upon a skinny pole, to swat away the swarms of gnats that hung pregnant in the air like cumulonimbus clouds. He was more drawn to the persuasions of the leisurely swing bench and the crochet fields of the quaint bed and breakfast up the road. He panted in the heat, sweat pouring through the cotton of his t-shirt, obscuring the lettering that read “This shirt comes with built-in Intellisense.”
While my father was not fond of the space, my cousins were eager to explore every inch of dirt, their shoes caked in mud and the knees of their jeans stained from where they knelt on the ground, examining the rocks that littered the banks of the creek. We all went down to the water’s edge, having donned our bathing suits, mine a bubblegum pink and chocolate brown tankini, and listened to the words of my grandfather as he pushed a raft into the water. The raft itself was not one of the inflatable kinds you could buy at the supermarket, but one of his own making, crafted entirely from decommissioned lawn chairs and duct tape. He, in his commanding tone, explained the safety rules while placing two more lawn chairs (these to be used for their intended purpose) on top of the raft, not bothering to secure them to the platform. I kicked at the dirt with my flip flops while my brother ventured into the murky brown water, declaring himself the captain of the makeshift flotation device. My cousin, Mason, followed him, and soon after, Ryan did too. They looked like a row of ducklings as they set toward the raft.
I watched as each of them in turn climbed aboard and pushed the other off. There was something methodical and innocent about the way each boy had to make his dominance known. I again turned to my father who was pacing up and down the sides of the banks. I’d never seen him more out of his element, more miserable, but when he caught my eye, he smiled to me and asked me if I was enjoying myself. I was. But it hurt me that he wasn’t.
That night we decided to stay, choosing the wooded wilderness over the soft comforts of the Bed and Breakfast. My father and mother went back, so I stayed with my aunt. She, as her children ran around her, pretending to shoot each other with bb guns, nailed stakes into the ground to pitch our tent. She unfolded and constructed the temporary shelter, her hands nimble as she worked threading the poles through the loops in the tent fabric. Then, one by one, she laid out each of our sleeping bags. I remember laying down that night with my head planted firmly on a rock. I woke the next morning stiff.
My grandfather took us to the place in his garden where he was growing bamboo. The stalks reached high above our heads, knit so tightly together that the garden on the other side wasn’t visible. My grandfather had hollowed out a small cavity in the bamboo field. I thought about getting lost there.
When our Subaru Forester kicked up dust behind us as we left the dirt roads of Del Ray Heights behind us, I felt the tears form in my eyes for the fluffy gray and white kitten I was leaving behind. I did not weep for my family.
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I sunk further into the couch cushions as my uncle paused the video on the T.V. I was busted up laughing, folding over myself. The whole living room was packed with people: some sitting on the floor, others on the marble outcrop of the fireplace, still more in chairs and on couches. My eyes scanned the room, taking in the faces. My Aunt Jen had stopped coming years ago. My Uncle Tim and his daughters didn’t show up anymore; he got into a fight with my aunt over Thanksgiving. My grandmother moved to Florida and had a stroke there; now she can’t travel for holidays. My Grandpa Tony passed away this past spring. My brother’s friend sat beside him, the two of them laughing to themselves about political jokes. On the floor sat Shaun where my father should be. My grandfather couldn’t make it up for Christmas this year.
As I sat there, watching that moment play out on screen, I remembered what it felt like for this space to feel whole. Maybe we were never whole. Families, like any other part of life’s cycle, are not stagnant. They grow and dwindle and morph into each other, and I can’t keep resenting the way things change.
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After having a discussion about my memoir with Benny, I realized that there were some key details that I was leaving out and things I wanted to convey that I haven’t quite achieved yet. I realized in talking about this experience that I may also want to focus on the shift in my relationship with my grandfather. At the time when I was eight, I idolized him because I thought he was the most fun and interesting person I had ever met, but as I’ve gotten older and formulated my own opinions and viewpoints, I’ve found it much harder to get along with him. I feel that I want to expand on that feeling throughout the story and maybe include something in that vein, but I’m not sure if the overall memoir would become too muddled if I were to do this. I also feel that there are certain scenes I want to add or expand upon in order to make the narrative stronger. I think the content is there, I just need to work the feeling out of it more. The purpose, I think, still doesn’t come through as much in the first portion of the story as I want it to.
Advanced Composition 