Alex Polson's Personal Blog

Stories of My Father

Posted: 2008-12-08T15:02Z[UTC] by Alex

There is so much about my father that I don't know. Over the years I've heard many stories about my dad's experiences growing up, his father, his wishes and much more (sometimes multiple times). Half of the stories I've heard from him first hand and the other half I've heard from friends, my mum or other people I wouldn't expect to hear them from. This is a real problem for me as it's been made abundantly clear that, in general, I didn't have enough interest in my father's stories growing up to really dig deeper and learn about him. Over the weekend Sari worked at the Starbucks in Fremont serving drinks (she usually works at the corporate offices but she was given the opportunity to work in the store for a day). I was there with my book and laptop sipping chai and enjoying my father's company. It was the first time in a long time that we'd been able to sit down and talk together without any distractions (such as broken computers...) and because of that I got another one of his wonderful life stories. It suddenly occurred to me how little I knew about my father.

I had done a report in junior high about our roots in Scotland and I know that all of my relatives live in England but that's about it. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've really grown interested in my family background, which is very sad. I've decided that as a new year's resolution I'm going to commit myself to sitting down with my dad regularly and picking his brain. At the same time I want to put together sort of a mini biography about him.I've always fancied myself as a writer, though the amount of writing I have under my belt is limited to school assignments and the few and far between blog posts that I write. I hope this ends up being a good exercise for my writing but also will help me learn more about my father and perhaps the rest of my family in the process.

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