A Lesson about Sentimentality

This is a craft lesson I once used in beginning creative writing classes to talk about cliché, abstract vs. concrete language, and unearned, Hallmark-y emotion.

It’s a one-page sheet of paper, typed. I’d pass this out and read it aloud.

Family

Oh, what a wonderful thing God has created. There can be no other thing in the world that God created that stands for anything more beautiful than the family. Everything else in life–money, friends, houses, cars, school, sports, jobs–can come and go, but the family is always there. God didn’t make it easy for the family, but he made it possible–with hard work and everyone working together, caring for each other and working as one. Yes, God made man, then woman, then said, Be a family. This will be my most beautiful creation. 

This family means more to me than life itself. 

Then I’d ask the students to respond. How did these words make you feel?

Some claimed that they were very moving.

Okay. Show me where you find it moving.

That last line. “This family means more to me than life itself.”

Who is saying that?

We don’t know.

Who is “this family” in the last line?

We don’t know.

When the speaker says, “God didn’t make it easy for the family,” did you picture a particular kind of trial?

Yes!

What?

A chorus of answers: divorce, moving across country, death, racial discrimination, class bias, illness, money troubles, alcoholism.

Did you maybe picture your own family or a family you know when I read those words?

Yes!

Write down a scene you pictured. As many details as you can. All five senses.

Furious scribbling.

Read aloud some of the concrete details you’ve written down.

I’d praise at least one particular, concrete detail from each student.

·      The smell of chlorine in an empty family pool.

·      A divorced father picking up his kids in a red truck, Led Zeppelin on the radio.

·      A boy knocking on doors, asking to mow his neighbors’ grass to make enough money so that his single mom could go buy something to make for dinner.

·      Trying to fall asleep on an empty stomach.

·      And so on…

So, this piece I read to you, I said, is it good writing or bad writing?

See, they get it now. “It’s bad, they say. Really bad. It’s vague! It’s sappy!”

What if I told you that I found this poem one day at a restaurant where I waited tables, left behind with an empty coffee cup and a full ashtray, written on a piece of notebook paper?

Are you making this up?

No, I’m not. [I’d reach down into my bag and pull out the piece of notebook paper, heavily creased and soft, like a t-shirt.]

This gave them pause. “Do you remember who was sitting there?”

No, I’d just come onto my shift. 

They’d start to make up stories about the context, who had been sitting there? The handwriting looked like a man’s, they decided. Why did he write “Family”? What events precipitated his sitting down to write this–and why had he left the work behind?

This would go on for awhile, and then I’d reveal that “Family” was actually the second page of what I’d found. The first page was a note.

High Points to Make

1.    There will be no open discussion. I will do the talking and you do the listening. (15 minute limit)

2.  Mom and Dad’s reasons for working so hard at work and home.

a. Ways kids can show their appreciation or maybe they don’t. 

b. Ways not to show appreciation: speeding tickets, drinking! *LAW

c. Not showing some pride around the house, your bedrooms, etc. You must have pride in yourselves and where you live, wherever it is!

3. We have taken into consideration many things and it’s time to start fresh (anew).

You kids are old enough now that leaving notes shouldn’t have to be done anymore. You can see (if you just look) the things that need to be done. Decide who is going to do them and get them done.

This house cannot operate with Mom and Dad doing it all! We’re killing ourselves slow but sure. 

Having fun is everyone’s goal, so everyone has to share in the work, too. Freely, and not have to be forced to do it. 

This family has been through a lot together. Maybe not as much as others, a lot more than most, but I feel it’s made us a stronger, closer family, and that’s all I ever wanted out of life was to be a strong, close family. We can do it if everyone does their share. 

(over)

And on the other side of the page was “Family.”

More discussion. So it’s a parent, writing out what they want to say at some kind of family meeting?

What can you tell me about this family?

They laughed. “Looks like the kids got a speeding ticket and maybe got caught drinking.” They laughed.

What else?

It’s really cute how he put that little asterisk next to LAW! Like he REALLY wanted to emphasize that.

What else?

What’s up with “It’s time to start fresh (anew).” Why put anew in parentheses?

What else?

The family has been through something, but we don’t know what. THEY know what, but we don’t know.

The letter is not to us. 

True…

If this was a short story, how would you solve this problem? [Here we would talk about point of view and exposition, etc.]

And so on…

At the end of class, I told my students the truth. I told them my story.

My father wrote that letter in the summer of 1987.  When he read “Family” to us, he’d put down his cigarette and wept at the kitchen table.

We’d only recently started living all together again, you see.

The year before, the railroad had transferred my dad from Peru, Indiana to Cincinnati, three hours south. My parents had decided to move to a small town on Ohio River called Aurora, Indiana.

But I’d begged my parents to let me stay in Peru and graduate; I only had a year of school left, and I was ranked first in my class at the time. They said yes, which, in retrospect, was very unfair to my sister, who was only a year behind me in school, and she didn’t want to move any more than I did.

I spent my senior year living with a family friend in Peru. The day after I graduated from high school, I moved to Aurora, and my reintroduction into the family unit wasn’t going well–as the note above reveals.

That summer, my dad was pulling double shifts at the railroad, trying to make sure he’d be able to pay my room and board at DePauw.

My mom was working at the local hospital full time and going to college to get her degree. 

Instead of stepping up and helping to keep the house in order, I was hanging out with my sister and her friends, getting into trouble. Parties. Boys. Speeding tickets. Drinking! *LAW! I’d start smoking. I was 18 and angry and scared to death and lonely. As rebellious teens go, I was pretty tame, but I’d fucked up enough to instigate a family meeting and my dad’s tears.

After the meeting, my dad left those two handwritten pages on the table, and I picked them up and took them with me a few weeks later when I went to college. I’ve carried them around for 30 years. 

Things I’m thankful for:

·      My dad didn’t hit his kids when they caused trouble. He called a family meeting and tried to write a poem to tell us how he felt.

·      My dad didn’t go to college, but he made sure that his wife and kids did.

·      He grew up working class, generations back. But his three kids are now part of the professional class. And he accomplished this working a job he really didn’t like.

That morning, my dad looked at me and said, “Cathy, you’re getting ready to go to college. Do you know how important that is? I decided to stick with the railroad, and your mom and I decided to leave Peru, so that I could make enough money to put you through school. Every day, I drive an hour into the city and work a job I hate so that someday, you won’t have to work a job you hate. I don’t care what you end up doing, just as long as it means something to you and you look forward to going to work every day.”

In college and graduate school, I met plenty of friends whose parents were in perpetual shame spirals over their children’s career choices.

What did my dad say when I told him I wanted to be a writer?

He said, “Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you.”

And he has.

Cathy Day is the author of The Circus in Winter and teaches creative writing at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared most recently in The Millions, The LitHub, and PANK.