Creative Emulation: Gilead

As soon as I started reading Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, I knew I wanted to emulate the theme as well as some of the voice. While I didn’t want to copy the plot line outright I still wanted to somehow incorporate the idea of a father leaving in some way. To steer it away from death as a form of departure I decided to go with a father who is leaving the family home because he’s divorcing the child’s mother. I also wanted to incorporate the idea of a father writing letters or a journal to a child of his whom he fears won’t understand him or what is about to happen that will change their lives.  I adopted the same dialogue style as Robinson does in Gilead in terms of the punctuation, or lack thereof. While reading, I felt that it made the conversations between John Ames and his son more relatable and informal and I wanted that to translate into my piece as well. 

This is a response I wrote for one of my graduate classes.

*

Last night we sat in your bed and talked about when I would be leaving. You kept your face buried in your pillow and your dark hair, matted with brown knots, cascaded over the yellow moon and star fabric. I remember the day your mother surprised you with that bed set. You were so surprised, jumping up and down, excited for your “big girl” sheets. I should have done more things like that. Maybe I should have been more like your mother. You asked where I would be going, and I said, I don’t know, maybe to a small apartment or to Aunt Cathy’s, and you said, I don’t like Aunt Cathy, and I said, neither do I.

I looked around your bedroom. The walls are both pink and blue. I remember painting those walls with you and your mother. We gave you a little tray of blue paint to paint the bottom half of the wall because you were too small to paint any higher. Your mother pushed your hair back with a flowered headband and you wore an old nightgown. I remember the way the sunlight always seemed to find her face when she laughed like when I stepped into the pink paint tray by accident. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything to make her laugh. You shifted your face across the pillow case, exhaling deeply, and I asked you, don’t you want some air, and you said, no.

You have so many books in your room. On floating shelves, on the floor, on the bookcase made of cheap bleached wood you wanted to help me build with your red and yellow plastic hammer. Some are filled with watercolor illustrations or cartoons and some are filled with inscriptions, mostly from me. I’ve never been good at speaking to people’s faces which is why half of your books have page long inscriptions and the reason I am filling this journal for you. I picked up the Eleanor Roosevelt biography I got you for your last birthday and held the glossy cover in my hands. We have been reading a few pages of this together every night so I asked you if you wanted to start or if you wanted me to start, and you said, I don’t feel like reading tonight.

There’s a painting on your wall that your grandparents had bought and framed for you. It’s a nice a painting and all but I’ll never understand how grandparents come to decide what they think will be a fun gift for a five year old. Those are your mother’s parents. It hangs above your dresser and within the cherry wood frame is a snow covered village complete with horse drawn carriages, quaint houses with evergreen wreaths and white picket fences, and townspeople talking on street corners. Maybe they thought it would be something you’d appreciate when you got older and presumably forced it upon your own five year old. Don’t do that. I guess I should appreciate things like that more but I never had grandparents who gave gifts like that because I never knew my grandparents. They died before I was born but I’d like to think they wouldn’t have gifted me paintings.

I tell you about my childhood when you ask. When school started last month and I was packing your lunch for your first day, I said, this is the kind of lunch I would have liked as kid, and you asked, what did your dad pack you, and I said, my dad didn’t pack my lunch, your grandma did and she packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple or an orange which made a big crater in the middle of the sandwich when she threw it on top. You got off the wooden stool, came around the kitchen counter, and took the red Jif lid in your hand and screwed it back on for me.

My father died when I was 12 but you already know that since you’ve asked a little about your grandfather before. To tell you more, he was tall and broad shouldered and had a deliberate stare. With one look you knew if you had disappointed him or made him proud. There was never any question in the grooved lines of his face. He had earned them by always speaking the truth. He served in the army in WWII and came home with a drinking problem and a pocket full of medals my mother kept in a black leathered book. He umpped some of my little league games but never got to see me play in high school or college. I’ve caught you staring at the black and white picture of him umpping I keep in my office. He stands behind home plate, a runner in between his legs, and his arm is raised above his head where his gray and brown hair is cemented with infield dirt near his left ear. You asked how he died, and I said, a heart attack, and you said, do you miss him, and I said, yes, and you said, does it make you sad, and I said, he would have liked you.

You lifted your face and turned it to the side and I could see you looking up at me out of the corner of my eye. My silence must have gathered your attention. I shifted feeling the extra couple of pounds I carry hang over the waist band of my jeans. When I looked down at your face you suddenly looked older to me. Your hair has grown longer, the color of your eyes has deepened to an almost black, and the jagged scar at the bridge of your nose you got when you were pushed head first down a slide has faded slightly. I pushed some of that hair out of your eyes and you swiped it right back. I’m sure your mother blames that stubbornness on me. I sighed and looked over at the little nightstand you begged us to get for you. It’s made of sandy colored plywood and has two doors on the front with purple cut out stars perfect for small fingers to open them. There is a picture of the three of us propped up against your alarm clock. It’s a skinny photo booth picture you found in my drawer and took without asking but I never said anything. You can’t be more than two in the picture and your head barely fits into the frame from where you’re sitting on your mother’s lap. I want you to know that it’s hard for me to look at this picture. It’s hard for me to look at your mother’s head buried in my shoulder while she’s laughing and hard for me to look at my own crooked smile not necessarily because I’m angry or sad, although I am some of those on certain days, but because I’m disappointed. It’s important for you to know that I’m disappointed in how your mother and I have given up. I’m disappointed because I know we could have done better and I’m disappointed in myself because I don’t have any answers to give you.

One afternoon shortly after my dad died I found my mom in the kitchen packing our chipped dishes in an old box and I asked her what she was doing  but she only muttered something about needing more newspapers to herself and ignored me. Later that day she came into my room where I was laying on the floor sorting my baseball cards and tossed a couple boxes onto the ground and said, “Pack whatever you don’t want left behind”. I tried to ask her what was for dinner but she was already in the hallway shuffling back to the kitchen. We didn’t have much when I was growing up, and had even less after my dad died, so there wasn’t much to pack but I did what I was told and ended up with two boxes filled with some old clothes and my superman pajamas, some comics, and my baseball cards and glove. We moved in with my great aunt Helen, your grandmother and all five of your aunts and me, before she kicked us out because it got to be “too much”. We moved around, living with various distant relatives, until we each grew up and either got married or went off to college. I enrolled as soon as I could and remember being so happy to be on my own and that’s where I met your mother and just like that I wasn’t alone anymore.

I bet you didn’t know much of that. I’m glad you’ll be able to read this journal one day. I hope you will. Just so there’s no confusion, I don’t hate your mother. I don’t think I ever could even if I really wanted to. It might seem like we hate each other and I’m sorry for that but please know that I don’t. I’ll love her for the same reasons you do: for her gentle touch, her quiet observation, even the way her jaw cracks when she chews. But I’ll love her laugher most. The way it fills a room and tips her head back and makes you feel like you won a prize if you were the reason for it all. I’ll miss that most of all.

You looked up at me with those moons and stars under your cheek and I knew you were waiting for me to say something important or serious. I ran my hand through my brown and gray hair and put my chin in my hand resting on my knee. I stared at that painting and all those people running their errands and going to church and gossiping on the corner of Main and Ideal. I couldn’t look at you so to the painting I said, “I will always be here for you. Even though I’m leaving and things will be different, despite everything, even Aunt Cathy, you will never be alone. You might not believe me now but I hope you’ll at least remember for when you’re ready to believe.” You shuffled a little in the nook you made in your bed and I felt the weight of your head lift off the pillow and you grabbed the book from my hand, turned to the dog eared page and said, “I’ll start.”