Mike Parker: My son’s gift: Telling my story
A few weeks ago, my son Michael gave me a special gift. The book was titled “Dad, I Want to Hear Your Story: A Father’s Guided Journal to Share His Life and His Love.”
The book contained a series of prompts that Jeffrey Mason compiled covering a host of topics from birth through the present, from family history to personal trivia. Mason developed the book for his father in response to his dad’s fight with Alzheimer’s. He also developed one for moms.
Although the book’s design encourages users to write inside it, my handwriting is so bad that I decided the kindest way to make my story readable was to type prompts and respond to them, so I created a Word document. So far, I have finished two parts that have carried me through the first 45 pages of prompts.
This exercise has provided several surprises already. The first surprise was that my son – or anyone, for that matter – would be interested in my story. I do not see myself as a particularly interesting person.
The other surprises have come from answering the prompts in the book. For instance, one prompt asks: “Who were your best friends in your elementary school days? Are you still in contact with them?” I could not remember the name of one single fellow student at J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School in Richmond, Va. I remember the names of only two teachers – one I loved dearly and the other who was on the other end of the affection spectrum.
Mrs. Imogene Ligon was my first-grade teacher. I had just moved to Richmond from Hapeville, Ga. I started kindergarten at the Hapeville school midyear. The reason for the delay was simple: my parents did not realize I could attend kindergarten since I missed the cutoff for starting school in Virginia. In the Old Dominion state, a student had to be five on or before Oct. 1, and my birthday is in the middle of October.
Mrs. Ligon contacted my mom and told her I was ready to learn to read.
“The time to teach a child to read is when that child is ready,” she said. Then Ms. Ligon offered to stay after school with me for 30 minutes each day until I caught up with my classmates.
Through her tutoring, I made so much progress that I went through two midyear promotions that allowed me to complete three grades in two years. Her efforts paid off in another way: I ended up earning an undergraduate and two graduate degrees in English.
I was also surprised at how going through the prompts made me realize how disappointed I was when, at the end of my sophomore year in high school, I had to leave my beloved John Marshall High in Richmond and attend Reynoldsburg High in Ohio.
I went from a school with 1,500 students in grades 9-12 to a school with 700 students in grades 10-12. I realized I was an outsider at my new school. The fact I was from the South did not make life easier. One teacher wrote “awl” and “oil” on the blackboard and had me pronounce both words. She expected me to pronounce the words the same. When I pronounced the words correctly, she said:
“Well, you’ve been here too long to keep your accent.”
“I have been here five weeks,” I retorted. “Contrary to what you may think, we Southerners do not put ‘awl’ in our cars, and we don’t sit on the verandas of our plantation houses sipping Mint Juleps.”
I am looking forward to seeing what other memories these prompts bring to the surface. I just hope my son does not fall to sleep when he reads what I have written.
Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
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