Mimi Schwartz's memoir piece, "What Father Always Said" is about the clashing of two different cultures. The one that was way back when in a German town. The other in the present in Queens, New York.
Schwartz's memoir is split in six pieces.
The first piece introduces her father to the audience and his favorite line is, "In Rindheim, you didn't do such things!" We as a reader recognize that the father compares and contrasts the two very different cultures quite frequently. But as a young girl, Schwartz didn't seem to care about Rindheim or what they did there.
The second part is when the father finally gets to introduce his homeland to his American born daughter. On viewing the place where her father grew up, she denounces him a hick, but at least admits that her father's home town was prettier than Queens. When getting the chance of seeing inside the walls of the house her father grew up in, he bows out which is suspicious from a man who wants to share so much of his past history with his daughter. Later in life, the daughter does some comparing and contrasting herself with the realization that Asians are beginning to fill little Rindheim just like Forrest Hills, Queens. They’re more alike than her father realized.
The third part reveals that Schwartz’s father doesn’t necessarily wants to reveal everything about his homeland. It seems like he doesn’t what to relive all the horrors and tragedy his town suffered, but instead wants to remember all the wonderfulness he grew up with. And even when he was pushed by Schwartz to tell a story from back then (the
Kristallnacht story for example).
The fourth part focuses on the school her father went to and talks of when her parents dated. The school was split into two - the Jewish had the first floor and only one teacher and the Christians had two floors and more teachers. Even though the father said that everyone got along, it probably wasn't true. This is the one time during her retelling of the story that things are relaxed and playful.
The fifth part is wrapped around the cemetery. Schwartz sees the places where her grandmother, grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather are buried. She can’t get a hold of who they were just by staring at their gravestones. She could only envision her living grandparents. But by placing rocks on the gravestones she realizes something. “Some connection had been made, he knew, the one he had run from and returned to, the one I resisted even as I lay stones” (Schwartz 221). She also connects to all the young lives lost in the cemetery to the life lost of her older sister. She also learns more about her family in the form of Aunt Rosa who was deported to a concentration camp where she died. But still, Schwartz doesn’t fully imagine all the death and mayhem – she only imagines the roles of actors and actresses portraying the people killed.
The sixth and final part describes how her father loses his favorite line of “In Rindheim, we didn’t do such things.” He instead tells his daughter that she should be happy that she’s in America whenever she’s sad. He doesn’t try to persuade her with talks of his homeland and the magical power it once held. He seems to not like to mention the town anymore than he has to. The town has lost its magic, as Schwartz noted.
Schwartz writes of a childhood spent in America with her father constantly telling her about his homeland and how wonderful it was. By taking her to Rindheim, all the memories rush back and by seeing the bombed out buildings and etchings of German marked on churches, he himself realizes that his fantastic little homeland isn’t what he imagined it still to be. He always told his children that Queens was so very different from Rindheim, but in the end, they were almost alike. But she also learned that it’s a treasure to learn your history and see what your parents have been through to make sure their family was safe.
By separating the memoir into six sections, we get a feel for who the father is. In the first piece, we see a father who is stern and flummoxed by his children and their behavior, comparing it to the children of his home town. The second piece shows a man that loses some of his tough exterior when faced with going into his own family home. And still yet, that unsureness is shown yet again when the father doesn’t want to delve into farther than necessary to explain certain parts of what happened in Rindheim. This memoir, to me, shows a man who was once so proud of his city to the end where he doesn’t mention it that much to his children. By stepping foot back into this city, he realized that everything great about it, wasn’t truly great at all – it was all ruined. He believed that everyone in his town did everything right, but realizes that they didn’t. No one is ever perfect, and neither was his town. Especially not a town that let their own citizens be deported to concentration camps so they could die there.
The father knocks down his timid walls about America and immerses himself with golf and with friends who never even heard about his city. His mouth doesn’t hardly speak of his once highly placed city. He seems to forget.
My therapist lets the words drop from her mouth like atomic bombs. “It’s sad that you don’t have a place for you to express your true feelings.” I feel my mouth open and nothing comes crawling out. I think that maybe I can come back with a statement that isn’t serious, but she’ll jump on it like a kitten discovering plastic bubble wrapping for the first time. She knows all my comebacks and knows that I dig deep holes and sprinkle my feelings inside where they’ll never see the sun ever again. And so I sit and keep all the words that ever existed locked up until I found a place for me to be comfortable to let them free.
