Punctum Saliens

I am beginning to think that the purpose in getting older is exactly the thing that irks me the most—seeing my father reflected back at me as I stare into the mirror or catching myself mimicking some unconscious nervous thing that my father does or hearing some too-often used cliché of his come tumbling out of my mouth. But the purpose is not to make me lament that I have turned or am turning into my father for nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose is the occasional recollection of my father in these trivial things with the hope that the remembering will extend to the painful things. The hope that when I am impatient with my daughter that I will remember my father’s impatience with me; when I am hurtful through neglect or forgetfulness that I will remember my father’s hurtfulness; when I am selfish or irrational or obstinate or mean that I will remember my father’s selfishness, irrationality, obstinateness, and meanness not with the aim of self pity or condemnation but rather to comprehend just how fallible—how human—we both are despite our immense differences. I have “reasons” for acting as I do and while, in hindsight, they may seem poor indeed they were, nonetheless, extremely compelling in the moment and may not justify but certainly explain my attitude and actions. And it is the similarity of those irrational reasons which I and my father share—reasons unknown and unknowable to all—even, sometimes, ourselves, but reasons nonetheless which exonerate us, to some extent, from the never ending blame piled on us by our progeny. My father was, just as I am, a mere mortal trying to get through each day with all the associated complications and preconceptions and limiting biases with which he attached himself to his world and is, therefore, no more worthy of resentment than I.