Blog # 4 "My Father Always Said"

I really enjoyed this story and the ending really tied into the intenseness and feeling that Schwartz was trying to depict. But trying isn't the correct word in this context. To really feel like your journeying a long into a person's life as you read their story, is really a wonderful, captured representation of life and a way to show how free and beautiful creative nonfiction is. Just like if we were on our own voyage, we are learning and in a way entering into those scenes ourselves.

This story made me think of my own heritage of the past and the tribulations that many before me experienced and encountered. The story started out with Mimi Schwartz saying the same two lines her father would always say such as "In Rindheim, you didn't do such things!" and "I don't care about everybody!" He said these lines whenever his daughter would would do something American- completely different from his past lifestyle. He flew his family out of Germany before times got worse and his memories of his childhood up to that moment were so strong and vivid. But at the end, he had his time to silently say goodbye to the past and the numerous lives that were lost. At that moment, a realization came over him that wasn't there before of a different life he now has and he should appreciate it and be proud of that. Mimi saw what her father experienced and she began to realize what she couldn't before. At the end, she wanted her father to repeat the same lines as he used to but he never did.

Through Irony, we saw one view in the beginning but towards the end, we were allowed to see another view by this journey to her father's painful past. And in this experience, both the daughter and her father learned something on their own that they took with them- two different emotions than how the story first started.

I thought of one of my favorite authors throughout this story. Frank Mc Court wrote memoirs of his life through childhood into adulthood of his life in Ireland and America. I felt such a strong connection with Mc Court as he vividly and very emotionally described his painful experiences as a kid living in poverty while seeing so much hardship and struggle. Like McCourt's journey, I finished reading this story with incredible insight, discovery, and emotion.