Mother and Ashes Dad

The story is about Ashleigh (or Ashes as her dad calls her) Ashleighs dad and her mom. Ashes parents is very different from each other.
Her dad is a very simple man who is unemployed, poor, and a huge dreamer. He makes false promises and tries to make people around him happy with false statements. Her mom on the other hand is the straight opposite to the dad. She is straight as a yardstick, and certainly not a dreamer. I would call her a realist. She never promises Ashes anything that she knows that she can’t keep. She used to be a dreamer, but then she married Ashes dad and she stopped dreaming and believing. The short story describes Ashes and her dads relationship toward each other in a special and beautiful way, but to the end i started to understand that the relationship wasn’t that beautiful. It was kind of fake from the dads side, and his intention made me feel like he was using his daughter for his own selfish purpose. I’m not questioning if he love her or not, but making his little daughter do something as stupid as that made me kind of question how some adults/parents think when they do that. His kindness was similar to brainwashing and he absolutely takes advantage of her respect trust and love that she has for him.

I can relate to Ashes dad. My dad is similar to Ashes dad. Not when it comes to the extreme dreamer part or that he is a hypocrite and poor, but when it comes to keeping his word or when he hands me empty promises. He has been like that since I was small. It could be all from to buy me something or take me somewhere. It could be promises about going somewhere and he talks about it and puts my hopes up, but the next day he forgot about it or he said he would do it. It never happened. My mom is like Ashes mom. She never lets me down, and she never ever hands me promises that she can’t keep and always keeps her word. The only difference is that they’re still married since 36 years back. But i guess opposites attract.

I can’t really relate this story to any other text or book I’ve read before. I had been thinking about it for awhile but I just can’t figure it out. But there is probably a lot of books out there about dysfunctional families

One thing i was wondering about when I read the story the first time was if she took the money or not. But after figuring out the answer to my own question I kind of wonder how she was feeling when she did it. She must love her father very dearly but I am kind of questioning her thought about her situation with her mother. I mean, she was thinking to herself before she took the money, that her mother was still working on getting her degree, which means that they didn’t have enough money to just give away 200 dollars like that. I mean, how was she thinking, cause the day when they are in a crisis, those 200 dollars won’t help them at all. Cause they are not there to help them out. I find it kind of funny that Ashes has been daydreaming about what she would do if she had 200 dollars, and she just gives her daydream away to her father, who had the same dream but in a not as innocent way.

My question about the author is, how was she thinking when she wrote her story about Ashes, is it maybe a autobiography of her own life story?

I’m kind of sure that she took the money. Because reading the story a couple of times made me connect it to that she actually did take the money from her mothers teapot to give to her father. Why, is cause the beginning of the story where it says; “Once it had snowed the night before, and getting to his apartment took longer than normal, as the buses inched their ways past snowbanks and awkwardly parked cars. But the sun made everything glisten, and the snow still had a pure look to it, which I knew would be gone by the following morning. You kind of get the clue when she says that something will be gone the following morning, which i feel that both the money and the trust to her mom will be vanished. First of all, I don’t think her dad will keep the promise about returning the money, since he always gives her empty promises. And second of all, when her mom notices that the money is gone, everything will be changed between them.

The way her meetings with her dad used to be described very colorfilled, but the time when her father was driving her to go and get the money it wasn’t described as colorfilled anymore. “You’re your mother’s daughter, he said. Good head on your shoulders. Problem is, I’d never be able to find another car cheap to replace it. No, Ashes, the teapot’s the way to go. We drove back to Mom’s in silence. Usially we talked. Sometimes Dad sang one of his songs to me. For a moment, a cloud drifted past the moon and the sky turned greenish gray”. I find it very depressing, you could sense that It wasn’t a ordinary day for either of them. She was about to do something she wouldn’t do for anyone, except her father, and for the father his relief was close to dissolve and his self-centered and greedy side in him, blossomed right in that last “normal” car ride.