MOG #19: Family room

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I wanted to get to hear from other writers, not that you all aren't great writers- the stories you've given me have been incredibly touching, but to read a post from someone who appreciates the stringing together of words in the way I do gives a great amount of satisfaction. I love writing, but I love reading so much too- especially when I have someone like my friend Cody telling his story. We met through English classes and I wish we would have met earlier just so we could have had more discussions, shared more ideas or given the chance to just be in the same class. Regardless, he's a very talented man, with a great view of the world and the words that come with it. I'm sure this isn't his first and only MOG, and I hope you all enjoy his craftmanship as much as I do. 

It took a while since setting out specifically to locate and write about a worthy moment of gratitude to come to the realization that all of them are worth writing down. Scouring your day to day life for something huge can, as the cliché goes, cause you to miss a small thing infinitely more important. For me, I found that today watching the San Diego Chargers play the Denver Broncos half-asleep in my living room.

The red leather that makes up the large part of my family's living room couch is always impossibly cold when your skin touches it, regardless of how long someone has been sitting on it. It's as if there's a tiny generator hidden under the middle cushion pumping cold air through all the cracks in the leather. A by-product of stretching out on this particular piece of furniture, then, is that you must first seek out and procure the warmest blanket in the nearby vicinity of the couch to protect yourself from the harsh winter of its fabrics. After arranging myself into a human burrito with a purple shell, I began to find myself drifting off to sleep amidst the running commentary of the announcers.

Except it wasn't the announcers, I realized, shaking myself out of what must have been less than a thirty second nap. It was my father, regaling my mother and I with a story of the days of his youth. This particular story was about a high school football game of some sort; with my father, the details are always lost in the kind of haze a sixty-nine year old man inevitably finds much of his history. Most of the time, you can tell when he's making bits up on the spot, smoothing over the tiny holes in the story his memory is no longer able to fill with the real events. Most of the time, I roll my eyes as I catch him and smile, making sure he's too busy to notice, gesturing wildly about some ridiculous scheme his brothers had involved him in when he was younger or the cheerleader who he is absolutely sure would have married him had he asked. Most of the time.

Today, I told him how ridiculous he was, and in the same breath told him how much I loved him and his stories. Something about the moment just stuck out from under the sea of self-wallowing a new term in school can bring crashing upon my shores. Despite the whirlwind of changes my life will likely be going through as I graduate this year and desperately try and figure out where I'm going, my dad will still be the exact same almost seventy storyteller, vehemently disagreeing with referees as a matter of principle. And while that rock may seem more like a pebble than a foundation to build stability on, to me my dad is as strong as any engineered slab of concrete, and his shoulders are bigger than any of the tall tales he tells me just to see me, out of the corner of his eye, roll my pupils skyward for a brief moment before sharing a smile.