Dogwood Chapter 3

The Historian

My dad (The Historian) told me when I was little that if I planned to be a famous dancer (as I insisted I was on track to be) then I should save my old journals and drafts. He told me that those discarded diaries would eventually be firsthand accounts for biographers.

He taught me lots of other things, of course, but first, my dad (The Historian) taught me to live, and write, and document my life as though for some audience after I’m gone. He taught me to tell a story for myself about myself even if no one else ever cracked a page.

My dad (The Historian) showed me again and again that History, and its older sister Myth, are just flawed perspectives of average people passed down. Sometimes recorded. Often revised or erased. I mean, the Library of Alexandria burned just the same.

At 13, I left my castle in the mountains and journeyed to a red brick campus with classmates whose names were on the buildings we moved into. I became the history teacher’s son and our new home was a small apartment at the end of a long hallway in the basement of a boys’ dormitory.

For years, my dad (The Historian) raised hundreds of other people’s children. I watched as he taught them the value of tradition (even if it’s made up), ceremony (even if it’s satire), fellowship (because it’s always grounding), and shared commitment (because we grow together, or not at all). I took a hell of a lot of notes.

When The Historian first came to my grownup haus in DC, he noticed a tree in our yard. “Look,” he said, “your dogwood is all twisted to catch the light from underneath those taller ones. That's what dogwoods do best. They wander as they grow rather than shoot straight up. They love an adventure for some sun.”