Blog # 4 "My Father Always Said"

I think to me this essay of Creative Non-Fiction “My Father Always Said” has two main ideas that it is trying to portray. The first idea being that it is crucial, in order to truly know oneself, to know your past and where your parents and ancestors histories. The second point that Mimi Schwartz is trying to make in this essay is that parents usually know best; she was finally able to appreciate the reasons why her father always tried to remind her that “In Rindhiem, we didn’t do such things”. With the family trip in 1953 and with her own trip in 1993, Mimi understood more clearly that what her father’s favorite statement, after they came from Rindhiem in1953, “You are a lucky girls to be here” in reality signifies a lot more than a simple understatement.

Even though the essay as a whole made great sense, each section does reflect on a different idea. For instance, the first section reflects how she thought her father just wanted to be a strict father because he had nothing better to do. The second section is Mimi’s beginning to understand where her father came from, and the type of life he had before Queens; the third section she is reflecting on how much the Jews of Rindhiem had to go through. In the fourth section Mimi is reflecting on how she would have felt if she were growing up during WWII in Rindhiem. Fifth section Mimi is reflecting on the somber emotions she felt in that graveyard. The sixth section Mimi is reflecting on how much she has grown as a person after this experience. Overall the essay had a phenomenal flow, and it all made sense at he end; it would be really interesting to develop an essay in this format.