Since there's all this spider talk in here today, I decided to share my latest essay for my English class. I separated it into a few more paragraphs so it'd be easier to read. If it's too long, don't read it!



Delicate Spider

At first glance, Ronald seemed like a regular blue collar kind of guy, but underneath the surface brewed something unusual. You could never tell that when he was nine years old, his father died from a freak accident while working on the car in his front yard. By looking at him, you would never know that he spanked his children almost daily and said unspeakable things to the family he loved behind closed doors. You would never see his deep depression, or that the love he had for his alcohol and drugs overruled any love he had for his family. He fixed things around the house, worked on the family car, and whittled wood into creative little items.

He welded swords and alien spaceships from gears and other metal scraps, made things like a bow and arrow, wooden stilts, a guillotine for chicken slaughter, and even crafted some neat little ninja stars, but never once did he show his children how to use a tool or to be crafty. Looking back in time, there were no instances in which this man taught any of his four children how to be creative in any way. This statement might seem rather odd since he was a considerable craftsman. It turned out that most of what this man gave to his children was a desire for something more. I am the third child of four, and this man is my father.

My siblings and I received a few tokens over the years that reminded us of our earlier childhood, but my father ended up reclaiming them within a few years of giving them to us. There were several oil paintings he had painted, but he took them all back. He made samurai swords and other little gadgets while he was a welder, but over the years he took back from us kids to add to his personal collection. He sold almost (if not all) of his weaponry over the years to finance his own bad habits, and has never shared his tools with his family members.

Throughout my younger years, I felt left out not having anything that was passed down through my family line other than painful memories. I suppose I did end up with more from my father than I ever realized, as so many of us do, when we come to find out that we have a lot of our parents’ same characteristics and habits. I learned when he spent a few years in jail over a domestic dispute that he shared my love for writing poetry.

My father had a knack for giving his possessions away whenever he wanted to give a gift to someone he loved. I guess that's where I got the habit from, because I've often found myself doing the same thing. My mother used to think I was suicidal, because I was constantly giving away my favorite possessions. So many times I would try to explain that it was not that I didn't want them, it was that when I had used something for awhile and had found a new friend with my same taste, someone that I knew would appreciate the value of a trinket of mine, I would pass it along to them to enjoy. There was a difference between what I did and what my father did, though, as he would slowly come to reclaim everything he had given away, as long as it was within his grasp.

Little by little, over the years, I began to realize that I had more in common with my father than I could ever have imagined. Finally I did come across something that he had given to me that I was able to keep as an adult: a silver spider. He has begged and pleaded for me to give it back, but every time he does, I say in a cool voice, "You're going to have to pry it out of my dead hand if you want it back." We share a little chuckle and he expresses that he really does want it back, and I simply repeat a resounding, “No.”

The spider was a tarantula that my father dipped in liquid metal. This spider has held a lot of sentimental value for me because it symbolized so many road trips that my family shared many years ago. Once a year, we would take a week-long church trip that would have us traveling to different parts of the United States.

Whenever we were driving, especially through the mountains or deserts, we were scouting for souvenirs of all sorts, i.e., snakes, spiders, odd bugs, stones, uniquely-formed tree branches, and anything else that caught our eye. We always had our eye out for tarantulas on the road. The other family members were uninterested in this treasure hunt, so it was usually something that my father and I shared between us. He would glance at the left side of the road while I would stare intently to the right. Screeching tires always meant that one of us spotted something. Those tarantulas kept us kids rather busy for hours, while we studied their every movement. Sometimes they would only be around for minutes, considering that we flung them across the landscape if one “wiggled funny.”

This spider made such an impression on me that I ended up getting a replica of it on my back. It symbolized not only one of the very few cherished bonds I had with my abusive father, but it seemed to represent the path I had taken in my life up to that point. My new spider tattoo reminded me of a bible verse that says that scorpions and the like are trampled on by humans, and I felt so much like that spider for being trampled on for so many years in my own life. I always had great respect for nature in the way that God made such intricately delicate creatures spin beautiful webs and yet be so misunderstood.

The delicate nature of the spider also reminded me of the delicate nature of relationships, especially that of father and daughter. I have heard so many stories of how it can be a beautiful experience, that so many daughters grow up to be daddy’s little girl, and that it is far from being a bad thing. The silver metal casing of this once delicate spider represented something as well. It was the protective shield that I put around my delicate heart, for the first man I ever loved who gave me so much pain and torment turned out to be the man who raised me as his “favorite” daughter. Unfortunately that was not a favorable label to have.

Too many years went by with the assumption that I never had a thing to remind me of all the things my father did. So many times I wondered why he never shared anything with our family but grief. As it turns out, my father did share quite a bit. He shared his love for woodworking, for oil painting, for metalwork, and for so many other things; he just did not teach us a trade. He let us kids be on the sidelines of what was his personal carnival act of daring feats and freaks in cages. We would never know when he was having a good day until he brought some new gadget home that he made at work for us to play with. It seemed there were many more bad days than good, and trying to dodge his belt or latest switch was a skill that none of us children ever mastered. To be a part of that family was to be a fool in a cage.

In writing this story, I never thought it would turn out like this. It always intrigues me to see how the mind works; how it processes and dissects information. Here I was, thinking all I had to write about was a silly spider my father dipped in metal and gave to me, and I came to realize that I was the one dipped in metal all along. I was that delicate spider.