Mining the Past: A clean shirt and jeans - so out of character

Before yesterday’s hockey game I took off my dusty workshop jeans and ratty workshop t-shirt and put on decent clean clothes.

In the past, seven times out of ten I’d go as I was, but I’m making an effort to change that percentage and not be so much like my dad (gone now for five years).

At a recent family reunion my youngest sister walked toward me across the back deck and said, “When you stand and talk like that you’re so much like dad.”


(This from a woman who looks and moves so much like our mother - now gone for nine years - that I sometimes think, for split seconds at least, mother has returned for a visit).

Hearing that on occasion takes me aback. I don’t feel like dad. I feel like me, and several years younger than my real age. I don’t see dad in me, though I hear him in the words I choose. I regularly mimic his speech.

“Don’t throw that out,” I’ll say in a gravelly voice to my siblings. “I’ll build a birdhouse out of that or use it as a shovel.” (A shovel? Long story.)

More often than not, dad-like speech is preceeded by dad-like thoughts. Before most hockey games I’ll look at my dusty clothes and think, who gives a shit? I’m not playing with the Queen. And it’s true, I’m not. She can’t make Wednesday afternoons.

Though she’s not there, I’m going to try to go from dusty to decent.

Among my reasons: Jim J., who plays on my team, is a bit older than me and reminds me of my dad. He always dresses so nicely. It’s a good look.

And my wife and mother will be so pleased.

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There are workshop rules and out-in-public rules. We’ll see which ones win.

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