Maddenation
Big Fish
Mom and I just watched the Movie, Big Fish; me for the second time she for the first. Or, more properly, she watched most of it, while falling asleep for parts, most significantly the end. She borrowed the movie from the library last week, but didn’t watch it until tonight; the night before it’s due. I will take it back tomorrow and hope to get it again soon, so mom can watch it more attentively.
It’s a good movie. I think I liked it more the second time than I did the first. If you haven’t seen it, do so. It’s about tall tales and how much of them is true. (It’s all true.) If you don’t like movie, what’s wrong with you? Maybe you need to get a bit older, have some adventures of your own, and learn not to take yourself so seriously. Come back later and view it again. You’ll see what I mean.
Now that I’ve lived most of my life (at least half, anyway) and had four kids of my own, I kind of wish, in light of the movie, that I’d told more tall tales of my own. The fact is, I’ve told none. As boring and staid as it sounds, all of my stories have been completely true. My theory is that children deserve to hear the truth so they learn to recognize it and trust the people who teach and entertain them. If they want tall tales, that’s what the brothers Grimm are for.
Yet there’s a part of me that feels I may have cheated you out of a little fun, and maybe failed to stir your imaginations sufficiently. Oh well. Too late now. You’ve all grown up and have lives and responsibilities of your own. You can’t be bothered with a few silly stories from the past, especially if you can’t be sure of their credibility.
But what an ending to that movie, huh? All the symbolism and significance and even a bit of theology (or was it philosophy?). I won’t give it away, but didn’t that ending tie it all together nicely? A story about a catching a Big Fish in a time when not enough of us know how.
My father was a salesman who traveled out of town, so I found it easy to relate to the movie and to the son who finds it so hard to believe or even know his father. I don’t mean to suggest that my life has been anything like the movie, or that I didn’t know my father. I did know him, and as the oldest child, I got to know him better than my siblings did. He wasn’t always a salesman, after all, and didn’t always work out of town, so I was treated to a broader experience of my father than Tom, Jeff, and Lynne had. I knew him as a sign painter, a wine seller, an inventor, a Pillsbury “dough boy,” and a purveyor of “International Sleep Teaching.” He even did real estate along the way, but as far as I know, he never encountered a town like “Specter” or did anything remotely like what Albert Finney’s character, Edward Bloom, did for its residents. But he could tell a good story, and talked baby talk better than anyone. He was at home with children, and they with him; so he couldn’t be all bad.
I wasn’t there when he died. Truth be told, he wasn’t there when he died either, what with his advanced Alzheimer’s. (Funny how we don’t say “disease” anymore. Reminds me of the time I was diagnosed with Osgood Schlatter’s disease , which is basically “bumpy knees.” Dad always called them my “osgoods.”) I was in Baton Rouge, at work, but away from my desk. They contacted John Pagel, who was the lab director at the time, and he was the one who told me of my father’s death. I told him what Alzheimer’s family members usually do, that Dad had really left us years before, and could no longer recognize any of us. I planned to take the trip back to Milwaukee alone, but David insisted on coming with me, so he did. He was about 10. He probably remembers the firing of the guns for the army salute at Dad’s grave, and collecting the empty M-16 shells. What I remember most is trying to lead the rosary at his wake and being unable to contain my emotions and asking for help from the assembled relatives and friends.
Once, many years ago, while daydreaming, I conceived a thought that anything anyone says at any time is true. I remember believing it strongly, although I could never reconstruct the logic that led me to that strange conclusion. Sure, you might say, it’s true for them, but that doesn’t mean it’s true true. All I can say is my realization was more than that. In some strange, unfathomable way, I believed at that moment that everyone speaks the truth, but that we don’t understand it as such because maybe we are not “tuned in” properly. Maybe we’re too preoccupied with reality, but that’s not it. Something else convinced me, and I know I’ll never be able to put it into words.
So we’ve come full circle. We’re back to tall tales and what is truth and what’s really important; what happened, or how you felt? And can you ever really share that with anyone else?
Dad • Connections/Ideas/Observations/Reviews/Stories • 09/09/04 • 6 comments
Comments
Patrick • 09/10/04 • 11:37 AM:Dad, you win the “most categories assigned to a single entry” award.
To grab onto one idea from your post: I don’t have too many regrets, but one of them is that I was too afraid to go to Grandpa’s funeral. I’ve never liked the idea of funerals in general, but I should have overcome that to go to the only grandparent’s funeral I could have remembered. I’ve never been to any relative’s grave either. Part of me feels like that’s the right way to be, to move on, to let the dead bury (and revisit) their dead. But not really. I don’t even have more than an educated guess about the general area where my relatives might be buried. Strange. Why are we like that?
AJ • 09/10/04 • 6:05 PM:Big Fish was a great movie, although my wife still isn’t convinced that there was something stuck in my eyes for part of it.
I think everything everyone says is true because even if they’re lying they know it.
Pat likes things to be exactly where they belong according to Pat’s idea of where they should be. I think that’s funny o observe in almost all of his posts, even though I’m pretty similarly anal about keeping things organized. Nevertheless, I think he may have missed that this post was more of a journal entry than an essay.
Well, Con Grad You Late E Ons on your “most catagories…” award.
Is the moral: Stop being an engineer and be a story salesman already?
Patrick • 09/12/04 • 8:25 PM:Anything anyone says at any time is false.
AJ • 09/13/04 • 7:04 PM:Hmmm. So, is that last post true or false?
Dad • 09/14/04 • 12:11 AM:That is the question. (Whether to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous children?) If it be true, then, alas, ‘tis false. But if it be false, then b’God ‘tis true. A conundrum, as it were.
David • 09/14/04 • 1:13 PM:I was only upset that Dad didn’t put a disclaimer on this entry saying something like, “Don’t read this while at work while sitting at your desk in a office with other people where you are the first desk closest to the door where people walk in, especially considering you couldn’t possibly read this without being moved to tears.” So that’s what happened as I tried as hard as I could not to cry(recalling days as a kid, Pat’s little brother, trying not to cry when I got punched or hit in the face with a rock). It didn’t work, as is the case when your eyelids can no longer hold any more water in your teary-eyed state, and the dam breaks. Yeah, here in the office. Luckily nobody noticed. Needless to say, Dad, I was very moved.
I don’t know if I can remember why I wanted to go to Grandpa’s funeral so badly. I just did. I remember that feeling. I needed to go. (I stupidly decided to write this while at work - no the best idea - refer to the explanation above). I remember a lot about the trip, but like most memories, they’re scattered and disjointed and more vivid sometimes and less others.
I will always remember the firing of the guns, and the M-16 shell I kept. (I wonder - why are somethings so meaningful in our minds and our memories?) I remember how weird the post funeral get-together was at Aunt Lynne’s house. And how Jared, Ryan, and I didn’t know how to act at any point of the wake/funeral/thing afterwards. I remember the feelings and wonderings dealing with the fact that Grandpa was Dad’s dad. I thought of how sad Dad must be, considering how sad I would be in the same situation. I remember being confused because Dad didn’t outwardly seem that sad, at least not in the way a kid like was.
Thinking back now, I don’t know whether I realized that Grandpa was the last of our Grandparents. I don’t think I did - I don’t think I realized how it would be going through basically my entire life without any grandparents, when so many of my friends, even today, have 3 or 4 left.
I also remember being very upset because I didn’t really even know him or remember him when he didn’t have Alzheimer’s. That is still the main thing that upsets me to today. And it’s why I wish Mom and Dad would tell us more about our grandparents and other relatives.
Go ahead, tell our story.
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