The relationships that family members share together are often changing. As strong as they are they are never constantly the same. As people grow so too does their personality and interests, these changes in a person’s life will often form and develop an old relationship once shared into a new one. In the story “Outside Edges” you see how a relationship between family members can change when David at the age of 8 discovers his new interest in maps of Canada.
The author “Ivan Dorin” develops the idea how David’s obsession with maps creates a new relationship and a new way for he and his son spend time together. It shows how as one person’s interest’s change their relationship with others does as well. As a young child David stumbled upon an interest in maps. It was a unique hobby for an 8 year old boy to have, far different than any of his peers. The author shows us how this hobby transcends into his father’s life and how the changes can bring upon new uncovering for them to share together.
With their new relationship evolving it would frequently find them at the library together in search of new locations “We must have been there for a couple of hours at least, rolling and unrolling the maps” or “When the other kids were still at home, we went on Sunday drives to Moraine Lake”. With this new bond that has formed between David and his father, it shows us how family’s can spend their time uncommonly together away from the regular and generic ways of society. Families in today’s society are highly influenced by their surroundings and social aspects of life and achievement.
Some parents put enormous amounts of pressure and expectations on their children today that they often lose touch with the relationship that they once had with them. David’s father shows this acceptance as to what society views as normal when he says “All I could think of was how simple it would be to have a son who just wanted to be a fireman”. The author shows how the father ultimately wanted David to be or find something else aside from his own interest in maps as he says “As a last resort I asked him, rather sheepishly, if he would like me to go with him to the map office with him and pick him up a couple of maps for his birthday.
The father wanted for his son to change but never impeded on his dream, this acceptance for allowing his son to do what he wanted and not what his father wanted allowed David to discover himself and improved their relationship with one another. With David’s future in his own hands he was free to experience life and create his own path as his father had allowed him too. The author in this book is constantly showing us how the influences of family members on one another affect and change their lives.
Influence does not always come from the parents, sometimes it is derived from the adolescents. David creates such a thing as he persuades his dad into building the rink of Canada even when measures seems to be overwhelming “I said it would be too expensive to hire people to cut and assemble all those maps”. The goal and dream that David had to “map out Canada” and “skate across Canada” we would finally see his father building David’s dream over the sheet of ice that he had inspired him to do so.
Influence is not only threw words spoken but created sometimes through life of another. Change presents itself with new outcomes, some beneficial while others are not. When change is presented to someone its outcome is created by the way they respond to it. We see in this story “Outside Edges” how change can bring upon a new bond and relationship between father and son when it is accepted and aided by the father. Relationships between family members can change; it is how you deal with the change that makes the relationship.
