Day 3 response -Reed

The book “Lost in Place” has a lot to do with family and relationships. The author depicts the relationship with his family as being close. The author’s relationship with his dad seems to be the most important. The author is always talking about how his dad is mild mannered and doesn’t take much interest in things. The author’s dad always talks to him about the crappy days he has while the author makes him feel better by telling him how much more crappy his day was. I find this sort of interesting since they each feed off of their negative attitudes, but the mother seems to be more enthusiastic about things. When the author tell his parents that he wants to become a monk and give up all material things his dad didn’t seem too enthusiastic while his mother seemed somewhat enthusiastic. The author tells a story of when he wanted to be an astronaut and his dad thought it was a terrible idea. Since the author was only seven at the time, the father didn’t think that there was a chance. He dreamed about the possibilities of going to space at the age of seven, and his mom encourages him to research and discover possibilities of making that opportunity possible. She told him to send a letter NASA explaining what he wanted to do, and four weeks later he got a letter in the mail that was filled with pictures of space and the information for being admitted into the space program. I think that this gave the author encouragement to pursue his dreams and in this case it was now to become a Zen monk. Although his dad didn’t seem impressed with that, I think that he has hope for the author. The relationship that the author has with his family is somewhat odd, but in the broad view it is a relationship that will grow and become more structured.