The Man I Promised to Never Become
For as long as I can remember, I have been fiercely devoted to following in my mother’s footsteps. Even at the age of two, I would playfully tease my dad and bellow that I was “Mama’s Gal!” and would leap into my mother’s arms. Though a child’s natural tendency would be to deny any similarity to any parent, I have always wanted to become my mother, and on the opposite end, to become the furthest thing from my father. It’s not that my father and I don’t have a good relationship—he has always been incredible for my brother and me – but he is just so… geeky, as my teenage self would have described it. He sports the beer belly, usually complete with a ketchup-stained shirt, along with the classic receding hair line, and don’t forget the 70’s era full-rimmed glasses. These characteristics perfectly complement his terrible dad jokes – Hi, Hungry, I’m Dad quality stuff—his guffaw of a laugh, which has probably caused irreplaceable damage to my eardrums, and an incredible knack for always embarrassing me. I once made him aware of just how embarrassing he was, and I guess he took that as a challenge because he began to fake cry in the local McDonalds drive-thru, ‘sobbingly’ telling the man behind the window that I had “hurt his feelings”. On the complete other end of the spectrum, you would find my mother. Quiet, compassionate to a fault, and non-confrontational, she is what I have always aspired to be. Take a guess at which one I became.
The first time I remember having something in common with my dad was when I was probably about four years old. We had been reading books together before bed every night for most of my life, but around this time, one book in particular became the bedtime favorite. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak became my demand, and night after night and we dove into this alternate world together, where Max was king and had the power to fight off monsters. What really sold this story for my four year old self was the voices my dad created for the monsters. I can still hear them; the one-eyed monster having a deep and brassy tone like that of a tuba, and the one that looked like a duck was given a harsh, whinny voice, similar to that of an oboe (little did my dad know he would buy me an oboe eight years later). When the monsters would swing in the trees, my dad would always make a big whoooooosh sound and rock the book back and forth, bringing it as close as he could to my face as he could without bonking my nose. I would giggle uncontrollably while the monsters swung in their trees, completely absorbed in this alternate universe we had created together. The story never got old because I always got to read for Max. I got to be the little child in the wool suit who ran away to a big adventure and I got to be the King of the Wild Things night after night. My dad let me create the story for myself. No matter what was happening in the real world, I was always The King of the Wild Things at bedtime. I didn’t realize it at the time, but in the small act of reading this book together, I had begun to follow in my father’s footsteps, rather than my mother’s.
Over time, I have reluctantly come to accept that I share much more than one single X chromosome with my dad. Every time I make a trip home or even talk to my dad on the phone, we end up finding some new topic that we bond over. My last call home began with him jokingly asking if I had just woken up or was hungover because I “sounded like death”, and ended by us discussing, with passion, the tiny details of the latest documentary we had watched on Netflix. (It was Hitler’s Olympics, if you’re looking for a real thriller.)
Passion runs deep for my father and I, and is at the core of who we are. When we have a new idea, we share the tendency to drop everything else in our lives and focus solely on bringing that idea to completion. However, often before we are able to finish that project, we have a new idea that causes us to forget we ever had the first idea at all. This passion is what has caused our basement to remain half-finished for ten years and for me to have half-written stories and songs hiding all over my bedroom.
Taking after my father, I have a deep love for music. He graduated college as a music major and as a result, I was born with some musical talent. He put me in piano lessons at age six and bought me that harsh, whinny oboe at age twelve. I was passionately devoted to music throughout high school, and even considered majoring in it myself. More than anything else, my father and I have bonded over music. We listen to classical music together on road trips, send each other music puns on Facebook, and at one point I even played oboe in an orchestra that he conducted. This bond runs so deep, it has also caused the biggest rift between my father and me. The day I told him I was quitting band and not pursuing music as a career was the day I hurt him more than I ever could have known. I told him he was pushing me too hard to be in music, like he was, and I couldn’t handle the pressure. He knew I had talent, but all I knew was I refused to become like my father. Stepping away from the oboe will forever be one of my biggest regrets.
I wish I would have realized how incredible my father actually is before I moved away. He is the most driven man I know. He started his own company from nothing, working long hours trying to pitch his product to big-shots around the globe. He is helping my younger brother put an old car back together, piece by piece. He is the jack-of-all-trades, having the answers to questions from nearly every realm. And yes, he is still geeky and embarrassing, but looking at who I have become, I pride myself of my most geeky qualities and have realized that life is a lot more fun if you can laugh at yourself. For a long time, if someone mentioned I was similar to my father, I would deny it with all my might. But now, I have come to learn that I shouldn’t be embarrassed to take after my father, but immensely proud that I have grown up to be the person I never wanted to be.
enjoy your season 