Here is the finished product I was working on for Creative Non-Fiction.
My professor thoroughly enjoyed this and complimented me when he handed back the read essay. It makes me feel good because I really wanted this to be "right". I even took it to the writing center because I was so paranoid about perfecting it, for my own sake and the memory and for my class. In the end I am pretty satisfied.
Also this is a reminder to myself that I am still a capable writer, even if I haven't done actual fiction for a long time now.

Fireworks Tree



“Bio-dad,” Beppy laughs. “He’s your father; you should call him your father.”

My heart slows, my muscles tense, my breath freezes. Thousands of images fly through my mind: all of the visitation weekends I dreaded, all the times when he yelled in the car about my mom, the fights over the holidays, the days when I counted down until I was eighteen, until I was twenty-one…all the reasons why calling him “father” is so wrong, why he will never be my “dad.”

I breathe out, exhale, and force myself to relax.

“He isn’t my father though,” I say patiently. “Jim is my dad, not Ray.”

Sitting around the dinner table with my boyfriend Matt, his parents Mr. and Mrs. Brown and Matt’s grandmother Beppy, I politely change the topic, avoiding eye contact as I attempt to put my emotions behind me, ignoring how much Beppy’s words grated against me. I know that Beppy can’t understand- she grew up in a traditionally constructed family, had three sons, stayed with her only husband until he died. She has only ever been around people whose family tree really looks like a tree. My own “family tree” looks more like a fireworks finale on the 4th of July. I know why Beppy can’t conceive of why I’d ever call my biological father “Ray” or “bio dad”– but I still need a moment to myself after dinner.

I slip upstairs and reach for my notebook, suppressed anger and pain coursing out through my pen and onto the page.

Before my pen has scratched out a full sentence I hear footsteps behind me and feel Matt’s touch on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just need a minute alone. I know she can’t understand and all but…the emotion is still there, you know?” Matt’s hand rubs a sympathetic circle on my back in reply and he leaves, somewhat assured that I’ll be okay.

The fact is I don’t really know how to feel right now. I know where Beppy is coming from, yet at the same time, I realize we have a different conception of what family is. Although Ray is my biological father he is not deserving of the honorific which my Dad, Jim, has earned. He became a part of my life when I was six years old, taking on my three brothers and myself, joining us with his own three kids. Because of Jim I know that fatherhood is far more than blood- it is carrying me and my siblings to bed when we’ve fallen asleep in the living room, it is helping me with my homework, it is patiently tying my shoes every day until I learned how to do it myself. Dad is not a title that can be earned simply because blood is shared.

I think the reason I am reacting this way is because I have never been confronted with such strict normalcy since before I met Matt’s family this year. Mr. Brown, Matt’s dad, is a Quaker preacher and has been married to Mrs. Brown for thirty-one years. They both are college educated past their Masters. They have two children- a boy and a girl. Matt’s other two uncles are much the same way- both educated to their Masters degrees, both having two children- a boy and a girl. All of them have upper middle class jobs and have college-bound or graduated children.

The place we are staying in Peacham, Vermont, has been the Brown family summer retreat for most of the twentieth century. In town is the nineteenth century Greek revival house that Beppy has retired to and up the road is the modest camp house. Other extended Brown relations own property along the way.

The biggest controversies that I heard in the Brown house while I have been here is a family divide over land or hushed whispers over the rebellious Mollie, a tattooed and pierced but seemingly fine if somewhat juvenile person from what I’ve encountered of her. I want to laugh about it but everyone has their own forms of family drama.

All of this is in stark contrast to the way my family is. Going back one generation, my mom is the oldest of five siblings, only one of them her full blood. My biological father is somewhere in the middle of twelve siblings. My dad Jim is the “normal” one in that he only has a sister. Again, I am the second youngest out of my three half brothers, two step-sisters and one step brother…although in reality they’re just my siblings and only have the confusing titles to other people.

My parents are working class–my mom a nurse and my dad a self-taught mechanic. My mom is proud of herself for living in our house for over fifteen years. She’s proud of me because I will be the first one to have me bachelor’s degree from college. I’m proud of all of us because in the past year things have finally started calming down in our constantly drama filled family. It’s quite the feat for all of us to finally be well enough off and happy. For the first year ever when I have called home there has not been a saga going on.

But as I go on thinking of the differences of my family from the Browns, I am not ashamed. I have my two parents who love each other and have raised all seven of us successfully. I have grown up with six other people to learn from and have great times with, the benefit of being the youngest. My brother Rob taught me about computers; Chris keeps me updated on sports and fishing; Nic always helped with chores even though he had the tendency to take apart my bike and never put it back together; Jimmy was a constant playmate and my sisters were girly enough to remind me to be one. Fitting everyone around the dinner table might have been a task but at least we had the army to clean it up afterwards. There was and is the casual ease in which any topic can be brought up and laughter comes in as rain. It is a comfortable constant noise that is the rhythm of a large house.

I come back to myself sitting in this quiet room in Vermont and I am smiling, extremely proud of where I am from. My heart is at ease.

I stand up and head downstairs, finding Mr. Brown in the living room.

“Loey, I want to apologize for earlier on behalf of my mother. Mrs. Brown and I both understand,” he says.

I shake my head. “No, no. It’s okay. There’s a generation gap. I knew where Beppy was coming from when she said that. She’s grown up in a different time than me.”

“You’re very gracious,” Mr. Brown said.

I shrug. Mr. Brown inquires about my family. I tell him the names of my siblings and their ages, explaining that there only eight and half years between the youngest and oldest in my family. I smile in amusement at the look of terror on Mr. Brown’s face as he realizes the seven of us were all teenagers roughly at the same time. Thinking of my Mom and Dad I am happy with the way I know family. I finally relax, and though I am not nearly as comfortable as I will be once I’m home, I begin to open up more and let down my guard, no longer as afraid of the critique I might have because of my unconventional fireworks tree.