Like Father, Like Son

Or maybe not….

Most of my life has been spent thinking of my Dad in the past tense. Remembering him shaving at 5:30 am every morning, while I watched. Warm water. Shaving cream. Check the razor. Start. Or seeing the car back out of the driveway, as he headed to the train station and another 12-hour day.

I haven’t touched his face or held his hand in 53 years. Haven’t smelled his Old Spice shaving lotion since Friday, July 13, 1966. That was the last day he left the house and headed to work in New York City. The last time I looked into his eyes, tired and older than he was. The last chance he had to influence my life and say or do the things that could shape who I would become as a man.

As Timothy Key was asking himself in his piece, have I become like my father? Does my behavior mirror his? And as Sherry McGuinn was asking in her article, do we take on the characteristics of our parents and perhaps become another version of them?

Here is my take on this introspective journey.

When I was 12 years-old, the same year he died, I was 6 inches taller than him and weighed in at a solid 75 pounds heavier, so physically, no, I was nothing like my father. He was trim, handsome, grey-haired and quiet. Smart, with an intellect that longed for opportunity and a chance to stretch out and run. But was seldom given that chance.

He didn’t speak much, not to me or my sister. We were children. Children in the 1950s were watched and taken care of. Fed and clothed and taken to school. But conversation with a child was like ice skating with a tuna, it just wasn’t done. You loved them, and doing all of the above proved it. But showing it; adding in the hugs and walks and bouts of listening late at night, that was mother’s work. He didn’t do it, I think, because it wasn’t done to him.

His father too, died young. Left him incomplete and looking to others to finish the work his father had started. Maybe finding it in an uncle or an old friend. Maybe not at all.

So, in that way, no, I’m not like my father.

I lived through the quiet years. The lonely walks. The rides on a bike; leaning into Mother Nature, like a child leaning into the warmth and softness of a mother, when he is hurt or scared. I learned how to ask questions of the universe, and divine answers from the way the wind replied, the echoes of the bird flying overhead. The smells of flowers as they tilted toward the sun and flashed a brilliant smile at me as I rode past.

I dreamt of conversations with people who understood me and listened carefully to every word I uttered and sighed just a little — making me feel special.

So, I talked to my daughters and I listened. Read them books and told them stories at night. Tickled their imaginations. Scared away the bad man under the bed and let them know each and every day, that they were important and loved.

In all honesty, I am not my father, nor am I likely to become anything close to who he was.

I learned through absence, the importance of being present. Of thinking not just for myself but for those whose minds were growing into something quite special.

I loved my Dad. I would have liked to be more like him, had I known just a little more about what that might have been.

I admired him too. Not when he was here, though. Not when the distance between parent and child was too great and most of my thoughts and feelings fell into the gap between us. But later, much later when I had a chance to see the man as he was and as he could have been if his father had given him a little more love and attention and had been able to stay in his life longer than the few years that he did.

If he had been given the chance to stretch and grow that intellect of his, and be the creative that I now know was hiding somewhere inside. Looking, always looking for a chance to get out, but never really finding it.

He was a good person. I got that from him.

He was a caring person as well. I got that from him too.

But I think most of all, I learned a great deal from the things he was not. Not through fault or neglect on his part, but through circumstances that just never seemed to fall his way or gave him a chance to reach his full potential.

In all honesty, I am not my father, nor am I likely to become anything close to who he was. We are different. We are from different times and held different views of the world. But I think he would have done well in 2020. I think the creative side of him would be given a greater role in his life and that would have made him very happy.

While he never got the chance to nurture me past my twelfth year, he left a trail behind that I’ve been following ever since he left. And today, I honestly feel that I am closer to him than I have ever been.

So, in that way, he continues to help me in my life. While not the warm shoulder I have longed to lean on from time to time, his memories do serve me well.

Those tagged in Timothy’s story.

P.G. Barnett, Paul Myers MBA, Kevin Buddaeus, Rasheed Hooda, Arthur G. Hernandez, Ming Qian, Dr John Rose, Bill Abbate, Charles Roast, Dr Mehmetyildiz

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.