North Star

The North Star. My father used to tell me about the importance of finding the North Star. We used to go camping when I was about ten years old. My father used to set up an old ratty tent in our weed infested backyard. It was his way of helping me get a feel for spending the night in the mountains. We did not have much as I was growing up. My dad was an entrepreneur, he always said how he was going to be the next Bill Gates. As for my mom, she worked from five in the morning till eleven at night. My mom had several jobs so she could make the house payment and have enough money to put me through school, I never got to see her. Because we never got to see my mom, my dad and I would have a campfire in the backyard. It was the cheapest and easiest way of having daddy-daughter time. We would sit outside and look up at the stars, you could hardly see anything because of the smog, but the one star you could see was the North Star. My dad would tell me stories about how him and his buddies would go camping and get lost. He would tell me that the only way they made it out was with the North Star. I thought he was full of bologna because my dad hardly leaves the house. In fact, even though my dad wants to be, or is, an entrepreneur does not mean he ever leaves the house. He does not try to sell the little gadgets he makes, he just sits around the house all day waiting for me to come home so he can tell me his new inventions. But when I turned fifteen, my entire life went upside down. 

My father began to drink more and more as I grew up, how he was able to afford the booze is beyond me. Being a full time alcoholic, my dad became more abusive to my mom. He would scream at her for never being home and then he would scream at her for never having money. My mom eventually left both my father and the house and told him to figure out how to pay the rent. Being a child of divorced parents, I never got a say in who I wanted to live with. My mother had full custody because my dad was deemed to be unfit to be a parent. So, I lived with my mother and her new boyfriend full time and was able to visit my father on Saturday. My mother and her boyfriend were wonderful, they were nice and respected me, but it felt like I was a stranger to them. Her boyfriend, Chad, tried to befriend me, but it felt like he was trying to be my father and as much as I liked Chad as a person, I hated him pretending to be my father. When I turned eighteen, I moved out of my mom’s house, I started working part-time and went to college in a town not so far away. My housing and living were cheap and affordable and I was able to get a full ride because of my GPA. I had not talked to my father since I moved out because my life was so busy. On my spring break I went over to his house and when I got to his place, there was no house. I asked around wanting to know where my father went, but his neighbors just said that his house burned down one night and his body was never found. They said that he might have burned in the fire. My heart stopped beating.  I called my mom asking if she heard about my dad and she told me that I needed to come home. When I showed up at her house she gave me an envelope with my name on it. It was a letter written from my dad. He wrote to me about all that had been going on in his life. Apparently, one of his gadgets and ideas brought him great fortune. Someone liked it so much that my dad became a millionaire overnight. However, he said in his letter how he did not want to be found. When his neighbors found out he was loaded with money, they wanted to rob my dad. Every night someone would break into my dad’s house to try and find the money because they knew my dad did not believe in banks. With his house being broken into every night, my dad burned down but made it seem like his house burning down was an accident. He said at the very end of his letter that if I wanted to see him I needed to remember the stories he told during our campfire nights in the backyard. 

All of my dad’s stories involved his buddies and getting lost in the woods, so my dad was up in the woods. The next day, I went up into the mountains my dad used to travel with his buddies to search for my dad. However, I was not that prepared for the adventure ahead of me. Being both underdressed and somehow overpacked. I struggled to keep walking, the weight of my backpack killed my shoulders and I could barely stand. Not to mention, I had no idea where I was or where I was going. The sun started to set and I knew it would be nighttime so with the little sun I had left, I set up camp just like my dad had taught me to do, except with a better tent. Looking up at the night sky was beautiful, you could see all the stars so clearly, but the only star I was looking for was the North Star. When I finally found it, I thought of my father and started to follow it. Leaving behind all of my belongings except for a light, a compas, a blanket and some water, I followed that North Star. Within an hour or two I stopped at a beautiful log cabin. When I knocked at the door, my father greeted me with a giant smile and open arms. He asked me what took so long and then we went back outside, sat on his porch and looked up at the stars. More specifically we looked back at our lucky North Star.