What better gift can a parent receive than a reward for putting up with years of your insufferable nonsense? Thanks to her Old Navy commercials, Amy Schumer was able to do that just in time for the holidays!
The comedian and actress took to Twitter to announce to the world that she had purchased her father’s farm back for him. Her father lost the property around the time he became sick with multiple sclerosis, forcing him to give up his business. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Schumer said that at the time, her life was “spectacularly pear shaped” not only due to losing her family home and having to deal with her father’s disease, but also because that’s when her parents separated.
Shortly after the announcement, Schumer shared a home video of her young self at the property. In the touching video, Amy is about to “run away” from home, bidding a tearful goodbye to her dad who simply watches on as he records. It was captioned with: “Video from the farm when I was running away in the cornfield and my dad was taunting me because I wanted him to come with me. We lost the farm when we lost everything else. But today I got to buy it back for him.”
Schumer also posted a screen capture of a FaceTime conversation with her dad, presumably during the moment she shared the good news with him.
In her memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy discusses her father and his illness at length. She also talks about how her life went from privilege and comfort (which includes being driven to school by a personal chauffeur) to losing everything and moving out to Long Island. But the tough experience strengthened her and helped her develop a humorous way of looking at life. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, she said that she seeks laughter all the time, and that being like that comes with not knowing what will happen to someone you love.
During her interview with Entertainment Weekly, she described that time in more detail, saying: “It was Hunger Games. I was like, ‘I’ll take it from here’. I tried to make everything okay by making everyone laugh about how horrible things were. It kept us alive.”
It’s not an easy life experience for a 12-year-old to watch her father succumb to a physically debilitating disease. During an interview with Barbara Walters, Schumer said that the disease was very difficult for a child to understand. “He was in physical pain,” Schumer said. “That’s when I kind of took the lead and took care of everybody in my family.”
