All Over But The Shoutin Short Story

Meeting my Father The Memoir “All Over but the Shoutin’,” by Rick Bragg he tells us about his trip to his fathers house and how there was a flood of different emotions and realization because of it. This story really reminds me of times when my siblings and myself would go see my father when we were younger. It was kind of (emphasis on “kind of”) what Bragg was going through except my mother and father decided it would be in good interest for everyone if they just split up when I was much younger. Ok so it wasn 't much of a mutual split, my father decided that he wanted to be with another women, still he was out of our lives. After he left it was a really long time before he wanted anything to do with us again and by this time I had a lot …show more content…
At first I was caught off guard a little, unsure if I heard them correctly or if it was a joke. Well it was no joke they told us that our father had called and wanted to know if we would like to see him. We sat down and had a long discussion about it. My parents didn 't want to push us into doing something we didn 't want to do but at the same time didn 't want to make it seem as if they did not want us to go. After a long talk my brother and sister decided that they wanted to see how it would go. I really didn 't want to go, like I said before I had a lot of aggression pint up and did not want to see that man. After a while of thinking I finally decided to be the bigger man and go for my brother and sister because if I didn 't trust him and I wanted to be there I wasn 't about to let my little brother and sister go by themselves. Later that night we called our father up and told him we would be okay with seeing him that weekend and he could pick us up Friday …show more content…
We got there and settled in for a little. After that we decided to go on a bike ride all around the place. We rode for a couple hours it was actually quite fun! We where starting to get tired so we decided to head back. We got to the cabin and we ate dinner while we watched the movies we got at Blockbuster. The next day we got up and ready for the day. We attempted to fix up the boat to take it to the lake but we couldn 't get it going. So instead of taking the boat out we decided to just go and walk the shore. We walked around the lake for a little bit before heading back to the cabin. Now the rest of the weekend isn 't all that important to the story. At the end of the of the weekend we started the journey home. When we where all done it was a bit like Bragg’s dad, I could tell that he was trying. It was hard to stay to mad at him after realizing this. He was actually trying to be an active role in our lives. Just like Bragg about his father, I feel the same way. I’m “still trapped somewhere between my long-standing, comfortable hatred, and what might have been forgiveness” (Bragg 187). I honestly don 't know if I will ever fully forgive him so its just as Bragg said “I am still trapped there” (187) not in my comfortable