“You’re sick of the game!” Well, now, that’s a shame.
    You’re young and you’re brave and you’re bright.
“You’ve had a raw deal!” I know — but don’t squeal,
    Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
    So don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit:
    It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.

—Robert Service

When my sister and I were kids, The Quitter by Robert Service hung on the fridge, held up by a magnet. Our mom made it a rule that we had to memorize the middle stanza. You might think that’s the kind of thing that would annoy a twelve-year-old, and that he’d only come to appreciate it later in life—but honestly, I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t remember it ever feeling like a chore. Who knows. Memory is a weird thing. But I do know that it pretty quickly became one of my favorite poems. I went ahead and memorized the first and third stanzas too, and never forgot them. At 45, I can still recite the whole thing without even thinking about it.

Over the years, the poem became a kind of mantra for me. Whenever things got difficult, that familiar line would pop into my mind like magic: You’re sick of the game? Well now, that’s a shame… It stayed with me through the mess of adolescence, into young adulthood, through basic training, leading an infantry squad in Iraq, getting out and figuring out how to be a civilian, and eventually becoming a parent. Whenever it felt like a decent moment to throw myself a pity party—or maybe even throw in the towel—those lines would show up like an old friend, reminding me to buck up and do my damndest.

The poem hangs on my fridge now. I’m not sure my own kids can recite the middle stanza yet, let alone the whole thing, but someday they will. I feel extremely lucky to have the parents I do. My sister, Meridith, would say the same. They worked hard, expected us to do the same, to pull our weight, and not back down from something just because it was difficult. They’re kind, intelligent, and generous people who have always loved us unconditionally. A lot of the things they did and said have stuck with me, and I’ve tried to carry those lessons and words into my own parenting—though I don’t know if they’ve landed the same way. Time will tell.

Of all the good things they passed down—and there were plenty—The Quitter stands out to me as one of the more memorable wins in the parenting department. Just a printed poem stuck to the fridge, no lecture attached. But the message was clear, and it stayed with me: no matter what life throws at you, even when the chips are down and hope feels out of sight, if you’re still breathing, you can still fight.

And when you fail (because you will), get up, dust yourself off, and give it one more try. It’s the plugging away that wins the day.

If you haven’t read The Quitter in a while—or ever—you should. And it just so happens to be directly below this sentence… isn’t that convenient.

Nick Allison is a college dropout, former Army infantryman, and a writer based in Austin, Texas. His essays, op-eds, and poems have been published in The Chaos Section, CounterPunch, HuffPost, The Shore, Eunoia Review, Kindred Characters Literary Magazine, and a few other places. Ever since discovering the Mac shortcut for the em dash way too late in life, he’s been abusing it—constantly—and has no plans to stop. Also, he secretly enjoys writing his own bio in the third person because it probably makes him feel a little smarter and more important than he actually is.