Getting it right?

As I was driving through Birmingham yesterday, I began to reminiscence. When I drive down the side streets and alleys and rabbit trails that my daddy drove down in Birmingham or even as I explore new ones that I have learned on my own, I feel oddly like I am my dad. When I go to the school because my son has lost his keys, as I walk I look down and see my father‘s feet and legs walking. When I sit on the hillside at a funeral because another family is hurting and because my presence matters, I know I’m living out who he was. 

With all of these things and so many more, like when I look at my hands or my face in the mirror and I see that same little wrinkle of skin on the right side of my neck just as he had, I see my father. I hear his words coming out of my mouth, sometimes in jest, sometimes with admonition, and sometimes in frustration or even anger. 

I haven’t changed that much in the two and a half years since he passed. I was already becoming him. I will never be him, never be as much as he was, but I will always be becoming him. But it’s so stark now, now that the original is gone. And here I am – and my brother and my sister too – his walking, talking carbon copies, so much like the original… but like any copy, not exact and usually lacking just a bit.

I think he would be proud. He said he was. In a strange way it makes me miss him less and more at the same time. I guess maybe I wish I could say, “Daddy, how am I doing? Am I doing it right? I need you to show me just one more time.” 

So one more time I play him over in my mind. And I hear his words and I feel his breath and his big hands and those dark brown, often soft and sometimes glaring eyes, and I think I’m getting most of it right.