Becoming My Father

It’s a pretty standard source of Baby-Boomer comedy that we occasionally stop and realize we are acting just like our parents. Sometimes we are horrified by the discovery; sometimes it makes us a little wiser or more compassionate. It has happened to me before, of course. Most often it shows up in little things, like the way I rest my head in my hand, with two fingers supporting my cheek, and a thumb under my chin. Or how I sound like my dad when I get out of bed in the morning. Now and then I run into one I purposely try to fight against, like my dad’s hermit-like tendencies. Most of the time it’s no big deal.

Dad and Mom on Their Wedding Day, 1940

I found another one yesterday. My son, five months into a two-year proselyting mission in California, got to call home and talk for 45 minutes on Christmas day. We gathered the family together, used two handsets so one could talk and one could listen in, used the speaker phone for a while. I didn’t talk to him nearly as long as anyone else did. Most of my conversation consisted of making a joke and asking if he was OK.

Part of it was letting everyone else go first (now, that behavior is from my Mom, and the jury’s still out on whether it’s good or bad). But part of it was discovering, as I was listening to my son talk to his mom and others, that I was so choked up I probably couldn’t talk anyway.

When I used to call home from college, I’d talk to my mom for 20 minutes, and my dad might get on for a minute total, ask if I needed money, if everything was OK. Later Mom told me that Dad was just too emotional to talk; sometimes he’d go back into his bedroom and break down. It helped to know that it wasn’t indifference that made my dad seem so aloof sometimes. Today, I understand it even better, and I feel closer to my dad. I know how he felt. So proud of your kids, too choked up to tell them. I’m not quite where my dad was, but I could throw a rock and hit it from here, I think.

So I guess I’ll try to do my generation one click better than my dad, and at least tell my son myself why I didn’t talk to him. It was because I had way too much to say.