Essay 2 Rough Draft

Essay 2 rough draft
“Shooting Dad”

Family, how do you describe it? Family is sometimes defined as a social group in society typically consisting of one or two people and their children who share goals and values, have a long-term commitment to one another and dwell under the same roof. The definition of family changes from culture to culture and for each individual. I believe family either makes you or breaks you; it is the ultimate experience. In “Shooting Dad” Sarah is shaped by her family. Family shapes who we are as children and lets us decide who we want to be when we grow up. In the story “Shooting Dad” Sarah is influenced by where she grows up, the type of parenting her family used, family traits and her own individuality. I feel a kind of kinship with Sarah.
Living first in rural Oklahoma as a young child surrounded by woods, Sarah grew up in an area where the right to own firearms was valued. Her father was a gunsmith and a hunter. When at the age of 11 her family moved to Bozeman, Montana Sarah experienced living in a quiet residential area for the first time. However, guns were still a large part of her day to day life. I grew up in a home on a quiet residential street as did Sarah but, this is where the similarity ended. My sisters and I never saw a gun; my father was military but, never spoke to us about guns or war. For Sarah and her family the move to Bozeman was a time of transition. It took time for them to adjust, at first when Sarah’s father heard a noise in the yard he grabbed his gun and went to see what was there. Seeing crows old habits took over and he wanted to shoot them. When his wife reminded him where they lived he shared his confusion about the change, “Why shooting crows is a national past time, like baseball and apple pie.” For Sarah this was a turning point she was happy to see her father unable to shoot his gun off the front porch.
Sarah was brought up to express herself. Her parents had been raised in a strict structured environment and wanted their children to be able to make choices for themselves. Sarah’s father did not back down from his beliefs which lead to loud disagreements which strengthen Sarah’s beliefs and gave her the voice to express them. I was raised in the structured environment of a small town where girls had two options, go to college or get married. My sisters and I were expected to follow traditional roles for women, our mother taught us to cook, clean, sew and take care of children. Not fitting into the mold was an uphill battle, especially when I took a stand that it was wrong for the United States military to be at war in Viet Nam. I would have given anything to be raised more like Sarah, so that my differences did not seem like disappointments. The connection between father and daughter after listening to the audio version of the story seemed high spirited and filled with good natured differences. Able to express her own views Sarah felt free to take a different stand than her father. He supported the right to own and use guns, she did not. Her father supported one political party she chose another. Growing up Sarah felt that they were totally different but, the differences between father and daughter truly supported similarities in their natures.
Sarah’s father was extremely talented. His work room was filled with blueprints of his inventions, scrapes of metal and other materials related to his work and trophies from his hunting trips. Sarah’s music room was filled with instruments and paper for writing music topped off by a portrait of a French composer, she was developing her own talent. For each of them these were their spaces, their domains she stated, that they “were jealously guarded totalitarian states in which each of us declared ourselves dictator.” Sarah saw herself as different from her father, an opponent, not yet seeing the similarities that would connect them. My domain was my bedroom, an ordered space where I read books and tried to write, a place to be just me. For my father it was a space in the garage where he did leather work, his work space was very organized, everything had a place and was returned to that place after it was used. These were our domains where we spent time alone not understanding the importance of the creative work the other was doing.
As we, the children of the family, grow older we begin to see the value in our parents and their talents. For Sarah it was the fact that she wanted to form a better relationship with her father that lead her to look into his passion, guns. On her quest to become a better daughter she decided to, “Figure out the whole gun thing.” For myself it was trying to understand my fathers need to work quietly in an ordered room, a trait I find I have grown to value, that lead me to finding a way to encourage him to talk about the experiences he had during his military service. As Sarah, and I looked into our fathers interests we both began to see there value. Perhaps we were not so different than our fathers. As Sarah began to understand the reasons that led her father to build the cannon she found that although her father was obsessed with firearms he also valued “American history and family history, subjects he’s never bothered separating.” I found that my father valued the simplicity of leather working because; the end product was predictable and could be completed. Things that I came to understand were not always possible in the military. When Sarah realized that her father had spent 2 years working on the cannon, investing in the history of it, before it was ready to shoot she felt the importance of being with her father to record this big event in his life and found she liked being on his side. The shooting of the cannon showed Sarah how, although she still did not like guns, she was proud of her father and could allow herself the enjoyment of shooting it off with him.
We are shaped by our families, the environments we grow up in, the structure or lack of it the adults in our lives give us, the differences and similarities we share with those adults and who we each are. Family, for most of us, is as important as breathing. It is something we cherish more as we grow older and something we are willing to make allowances for. In “Shooting Dad” Sarah grew to accept that she shared many things with her father. When the reader hears the audio version of the story they feel the affection Sarah has for her father, it is clear. Her description of her home, her space upstairs and his downstairs, their different views and political parties, his involvement with guns and her lack of that involvement seem less a division and more a way of connecting. Sarah and her dad were artistic, eccentric, passionate, opinionated and strong. They each thought loud noises were cool and had weird equipment that helped define who they were. Sarah will follow her father’s wishes, shooting his ashes out of his cannon on the opening day of hunting season, when the time comes. Although she still does not like guns. Over the years I have come to respect my father’s loyalty to the military. I too will follow his wishes and see that he get the military burial he has requested when the time comes, even though I am not sure I believe in “the military way of things” as he does.