Working on Dad’s Files
March 2005:
Sometimes when I am riding my bike down Mountain Avenue on the way home from school, or when I am looking out the fourth floor library window while studying, or even when I have arrived to teach but class has not started and I wait in silence while the students silently filter in, I think about Dad. I drift into a sensed reality, that of memory displaced in time, in which I envision Dad doing something. Usually something with me. Memory configures itself in strange ways. For example, tonight as I passed Grant Road, moving on and off the sidewalk into the bike lane, I remembered an earlier memory of Dad. Maybe this memory of a memory can be called, as Toni Morrison calls it in her novel Beloved, a rememory. These occurrences of rememories happen in the absence of chronological oppression, and thankfully so, for the rich quality of memories can only be measured by their needed repetition. A rememory can occur at any time; one of the benefits of free will is being able to chose when to remember something, or to experience it anew as if time had no dominion over personal experience. Time controls almost everything we do from day to day, but it has no power to take away our memories. Only our own limited body has that power, which makes Grandma’s loss of memory especially the more heartbreaking. We live through an experience, and then we relive that experience in memory, and then we relive it again as a rememory—at any time, any place—until our mortal trap dissembles our mind’s free will. We need to write things down. And I don’t do that very often.
During the summer of 1994, when I was 15 years old, I was anxious to make money and keep busy during the long hours of the hot Arizona day. Paul seemed occupied by his preteen Eric Rudberg friendship fun, Mark had a job or something, John and Rebecca were on missions somewhere in the south, and Dad was at work most of the day, which was normal I guess. I stayed at home with Anne and Mom, unwilling to watch Anne’s excruciating TV shows and uninterested in whatever Mom was doing, which seemed so uninteresting that I do not recall what it was. I was 15, and I was bored. Most middle class, white 15-year-olds get bored easily, being too young for an actual job and too old for playtime. I needed something to do besides listen to song sets from 93.3 Classic Rock’s Javelina Cantina and close read the cute girls’ signatures in my yearbook. For some time during that summer, I had listened to Dad complaining about his files. They were too unorganized, they were outdated, they needed a good week of solid work. Needless to say, I didn’t pay much attention, not really registering that Dad had any paperwork other than what was in his inbox. One night, while arguing with Mom about the usual “We would like it if you were home tonight” excuse for prohibiting my cavorting around town, I retorted that I had been home all day with nothing to do but cook frozen corn dogs and fries for Anne. Dad found his window of opportunity:
“If you have nothing to do during the day, I can find several things to keep you busy.”
“Yeah right.”
“You can wash the cars or mow the lawn or work on your eagle.”
“I already do that.”
“I could set you to work on my files if you would like.”
“Will you pay me?”
“I would consider it.”
“What would I have to do?”
“I will show you tomorrow morning.”
That is the way Dad liked his business conversations, short and efficient. That is not the way he liked other conversations, though, and the next morning he explained in detail the way he wanted things done, interjecting instructions with anecdotes about his files and other items in the closet: when he had kept things and when he hadn’t and how he got this and where that came from and how important good files were and how bad files had been bothering him for some time. It was all very nice; one of the delicacies of any relationship with Dad was the simple yet delightful stories he told about mundane, everyday objects that you would usually take for granted. For Dad, each possession had a history of personal importance, and those histories regularly turned into lectures on how to keep things in good condition (see Dad’s watches). Those simple stories, unembellished and never lacking in seemingly unnecessary details, had a significance with Dad mainly because they involved people that meant something to him. Dad always had a peculiar way of memorializing important people in his life—he would tell simple stories about them, unabashed about those stories’ lack of a major conflict or arc.
Dad went to work that morning having left me in his closet with open files, blank note cards, and my walkman. As I started to work, I noticed that these files were not labeled “Deals I closed in Oakland” or “Important tax notes of John Teets” but rather “Faith,” “Plan of Salvation,” and “Missionary Work.” Here was Dad’s handwriting from the 60’s and 70’s (as illegible as ever) quoting conference addresses and Church books, referencing the scriptures and cross-referencing old talks. I became somewhat fascinated by the breadth of the gospel web I was weaving by filing Dad’s personal study, and I for once realize that Dad had a source for his endless gospel wisdom. Here were the bits of never-waivering advice, the cornerstones for Dad’s virtuous superstructure, and all the right answers to Jots and Tittles. As a curious 15-year-old with a developing testimony, I relished to opportunity to see the sources of the source of my beliefs.
For the next few weeks, each day I would eagerly return to listening to Michael Crawford on my walkman (I cringe as I write that) while sifting through Dad’s gospel and wisdom web, occasionally looking for a book in our family library that had been quoted on note cards or searching for a scripture that I never knew existed. I recall one instance finding the file for “Suicide” and wondering why Dad had to have information on the topic; I was pretty sure each of my siblings and Mom were doing well in the self-esteem department (I couldn’t believe that anyone with similar genes to mine could ever have a confidence problem). I found the suicide book that had been referenced in the file on our shelf and probed it, looking for answers to the strange inclusion of such a morbid topic. When Dad came home from work, I asked him about it.
“Dad, why do you have this book about suicide and why do you have a whole file based on it?”
“Well, you have to deal with a lot of things as a Bishop. Some of them are pretty horrible. I got that book because I needed to know what to do about a rough situation while we lived in Piedmont. That book seemed like it would help.”
I don’t know why that small conversation has stayed with me so vividly. Perhaps because I have since tried to comprehend Dad dealing with something that I don’t imagine he totally comprehended himself. I try to imagine Dad reading, praying, silently and stoically agonizing about someone’s bad decision. I don’t know if it worked for that situation, I never asked. Sometimes I think about him praying, reading, and agonizing about us, about me. I don’t know if it completely worked for us either, but simply by thinking about him doing that, I am pretty sure it is working now.
I find it ironic that as I attempted to organize part of Dad’s life into neat little files easily accessible, those files were, in a very real sense, organizing me. Not exactly into who I am, but more into who I might be. I had a close relationship with Dad’s files, a kind of marriage from which there is no divorce. I read those files and put them in their proper place and those files read me and attempted to do the same.
Files don’t die. They may become unorganized and ultimately cluttered, but they only expand with time, giving new revised information to old stalwart information, blending meanings and ideas, becoming a richer and more diverse fount of intellectual property, willing to be uncovered whenever one seeks to renew information once vital. Much like memories. And rememories.
Dude, you need to publish a book of essays.
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