Member-only story
Express Yourself
My Father Is a Preacher. I’m a Writer.
We have more in common than you’d think
The way my father tells the story, I am four years old, and we are on our way to the beach, my arm in a cast. I had broken it falling off a swing set.
My parents have talked up the trip all week, and I am dying from excitement. We ride forever until my father stops the old Buick. He wants to show my mother a ritzy golf course where he played once. He parks beside a pond, pointing to it out the window. Then we’re off. As we drive away, I start to cry.
When he tells this story, he says I cried because I wanted to get out and play in the pond, being unable to wait for the beach. In my memory, however, things are different.
I didn’t cry because I couldn’t wait for the beach; my tears weren’t born of impatience. I cried because I thought that puny puddle was the beach, and the bathos was crushing.
My father has told this story more than once. A lot, in fact. I’ve corrected him every time, explaining why I cried at the sight of that puddle. Yet the next time he tells it, I know he will tell it wrong.
Once, I asked my mother why. “It’s not that he gets it wrong,” she said. “He just changes it to fit the theme of his sermon.”
