“This is a look at my father and a reflection on myself and the broader world through him. It is an ethnographic film and accompanying text that captures my father’s life as a man in the southwestern United States while tackling recovery and reconstruction of the self. While filming, my father met his partner, was diagnosed with lymphoma, left his factory job, moved in with his new partner, emptied the storage unit from my childhood home, briefly split with his partner, and beat cancer. The film shows joys and wounds (old and new) and seeks not to tell a linear story of success but rather to reveal the everchanging circumstances we inhabit, including the evolution of parental relationships. This nonlinear growth contrasts with the generational change that I represent via my access to education and the film rests in the discomfort of this dissonance. The project’s goal is to allow viewers an intimate look into the economic and social realities and uncertainties of common American experiences rarely seen from this perspective in documentary filmmaking. However, making this film revealed why such an intimate view is scarce, and the struggles I faced while filming family are outlined in the accompanying text. ”