Today’s Tribune Article

Advice from My Dad

Published in the October 14, 2009 issue of The Tribune.

My dad drowned when I was 3 years old, leaving me very few personal memories of his overall demeanor. I can’t recall how he fixed his hair, what his voice sounded like, how he walked, or what his face looked like when he smiled. These details are missed, but they are not the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

There are many things he did leave me that have proven more valuable than knowing which side he parted his hair. He has left me tiny clues throughout my life to help see things from his point of view and reconsider or reengage whatever is calling for my attention. I have come around to understanding that this is our conversation, that these clues are merely a way for us to continue our father-daughter talks even if the discussion is taking place on different planes.

Our latest talk happened tonight.

After three months in my new home, I finally got my home-office put together. For weeks and weeks, my poor, neglected books were left in boxes waiting to be set free. The room that is now my office was previously the holding cell for a mess of unpacked cardboard boxes, a desk cluttered with computer accessories but no computer, and spare odds and ends that got put into the mix of it all because they had no other place to go. But this weekend, order was restored when my bookshelves were installed and I was free to arrange my office as necessary.

My new office is heaven; as Virginia would say, it’s a room of one’s own.

I love to write; but, my life as a writer and my life as a professional sometimes get in the way of one another. I love my nine-to-five job and feel very fortunate to be where I am and get to do the job I do. A lot of my day-job is writing — marketing and business writing. My place of employment is about as close to perfect as you can get when working for someone else.

But the writing I enjoy most is here in my columns and the novel that I am trying like the (Charles) dickens to finish. There is also my AmyWroteIt blog filled with random thoughts and commentaries. This writing, the writing that feels frivolous but taste better than ice-cream, comes with very little compensation and takes a backseat to coloring with my five-year old or crawling around my house with my one-year old on my back.

While putting my office together, the space where I will now do most of my ice-cream writing, I was overwhelmed with the urge to lock the door and never come out. The frivolous writer in me wanted to stay in my new office forever. She wanted nothing to do with the nine-to-five job. She wanted to sink into her new room, punching away at her keyboard to craft fanciful sentences meant only to entertain her narcissistic, ego-driven, writerly yearnings. I let her daydream while I continued to unpack boxes.

The majority of the boxes included my books and my ridiculous Vanity Fair collection. (I can’t throw them away; the collection is one of my many personal ticks; I like to think it makes me eccentric, my husband thinks it makes me a hoarder.) But then, there was one box labeled “Dad’s Stuff” filled mostly with school notepads from my dad’s days at Flaget and University of Louisville. You can’t open a box of belongings from your deceased dad without looking at something — no matter how many times you’ve seen the contents before. (I dare you to try.)

With my frivolous writer still thinking about holing herself up in her new room, the rest of me found solace in the very first piece of paper I picked out of dad’s box. It was a book report he had turned in on February 24, 1964. The report was on Jackson Scholz’s “Man in a Cage” and was divided into two sections: 1.) Synopsis of Book and 2.) Moral.

The Moral? “Man has but one job in his life and to perform it adequately he must choose the career fitted for him. He may be troubled until he finds out for sure he has chosen the right one for him, but when he is sure, he enjoys life much more.”

The way I saw it, Dad had decided to address my frivolous writer-self and tell her to be still … we all have a purpose and I have found mine. It’s OK for me to be troubled about what kind of writing I’m going to do, but my life is ultimately more enjoyable because I get to do it at all. It was the exact fatherly advice I needed at the exact right time.

I sat in the wonder of it all and reread the moral. After taking a break to talk to dad, I finished unpacking and made a deal with my egotistic writer: I’d stay put in my new office until this column was complete.