Becoming My Father

I have now reached the age where I’ve become my father. Or at least I increasingly find myself doing or saying things in exactly the way he would do or say things. And too often they are things done or said that I would fault him for doing or saying.

Today, after perhaps the eighth or tenth time, I caught myself standing at our front door, just staring out. No particular reason — no passing fire truck, no children playing, no dogs pissing on our bushes — just staring out. In his retirement, my father would do this much of his days. I was away at college, but when I’d come home, we would often both be in the house together (my mother would be at work). It seemed that every time I passed through the living room, he would be standing by the front door, looking out at nothing I could see was worth looking out for. I don’t think I ever said anything to him about it, but I still can see him standing there, a sentinel for a neighborhood with nothing happening.

Now, some thirty years later, here I am, retired, standing sentinel for my neighborhood, with equal lack of reason. But I may be beginning to come to an appreciation of my father’s vigilance. As I spend most of most of my days alone at home, juggling reading, the radio, TV, the Internet, writing (all satisfying pursuits), there is an inexorable pull from the outside — a desire for something to interrupt the routine, to capture attention, to just be different. Even a dog pissing on the bushes would be a start.