only Watergate conspirator who got pardoned, and the others went to jail for him, while he got a mansion out in Southern California with a fat pension and a valet—my dad counters, “But that doesn’t make sense.”
That’s how my dad sees the world. He is kind to people because to him it just makes sense. That doesn’t make sense at all.
He always had confidence in me, so when he taught me things, like driving in the rain or tying a tie, he assumed I would get them right. He’s always amused when I don’t. The night he taught me to shave, I wish I’d asked more questions. I didn’t know this traditional father-son interaction was happening until he came home from work one night with a bunch of shaving supplies. He’d rehearsed for our lesson, but I hadn’t, and I’m still not sure I learned the right technique. Shaving is a daily task that I manage to get wrong every single day. There’s a spot on my right jaw that I never reach on the first pass, forcing me to reshave my jaw three or four times. I wish I’d asked my dad when I was sixteen whether this was a family trait, or a standard shaving glitch, or just me. But the main thing my dad wanted to emphasize is that shaving isn’t a “do it all at once” task—it’s a “do it every day” task. His shaving credo, which he repeated at least three times, was “Whatever you don’t get today, you’ll get tomorrow.”
I am a “do it all at once” kind of guy. I am not a “do it today, then start over from scratch and do it again tomorrow” kind of guy. I get flustered at tasks I am unable to complete, which is almost all of them. Things like grief and love and mourning. Things like being a husband, or being a son. The hard work of life that doesn’t get done, because there’s always more of it to do—I have trouble wrapping my head around these things. Whenever I was overwhelmed by the job of mourning, I recalled the words of the comedian Stephen Wright, who boasted, “I walked my dog all at once. I took him to Argentina and back, then I told him, ‘You’re done.’” I wish.
Dogs do not accept this logic, which is one of the reasons humans seem to need dogs around, just to remind us that nothing works this way, unfortunately. You have to walk that dog every day, with no mileage credit for what you did yesterday. Work doesn’t get finished, and neither does play. You start over every day, and what you don’t shave off today will be waiting tomorrow, until you run out of tomorrows and leave behind more work for others to do. You fight the sensation of getting overwhelmed by the repetition of things. You build up some momentum but you don’t get a climax. You don’t even know if you’ve done your day’s work right, because nothing’s ever really done. That’s very disconcerting to me.
That’s what being an adult is like, at least in the version of it that my dad passed on to me. The work of fatherhood must be like that, too—when he was the age I am now, I was already a sullen college student, and I can barely imagine the aggravation of having to live with a nineteen-year-old version of me, who was just like me now, except more so. That nineteen-year-old boy and I have our differences, but we both like to focus on one task, do it all day, do it to death, do it clean, and see it through to completion before moving on to the next task. It’s constantly a challenge to leave today’s work undone for tomorrow. We think adulthood would be simpler and more efficient if the world had the sense to conform to our rules.
My dad has done all sorts of tasks for me that I will never live long enough to find out about, thing I’ll never notice, much less thank him for. These are the tasks that do not have heroic completions or satisfactory results or purple ribbons. These are adult tasks that call for patience and diligence. These things seem to come so naturally to my dad; he always seems amused at the way others of us—like his son—have to
That’s how my dad sees the world. He is kind to people because to him it just makes sense. That doesn’t make sense at all.
He always had confidence in me, so when he taught me things, like driving in the rain or tying a tie, he assumed I would get them right. He’s always amused when I don’t. The night he taught me to shave, I wish I’d asked more questions. I didn’t know this traditional father-son interaction was happening until he came home from work one night with a bunch of shaving supplies. He’d rehearsed for our lesson, but I hadn’t, and I’m still not sure I learned the right technique. Shaving is a daily task that I manage to get wrong every single day. There’s a spot on my right jaw that I never reach on the first pass, forcing me to reshave my jaw three or four times. I wish I’d asked my dad when I was sixteen whether this was a family trait, or a standard shaving glitch, or just me. But the main thing my dad wanted to emphasize is that shaving isn’t a “do it all at once” task—it’s a “do it every day” task. His shaving credo, which he repeated at least three times, was “Whatever you don’t get today, you’ll get tomorrow.”
I am a “do it all at once” kind of guy. I am not a “do it today, then start over from scratch and do it again tomorrow” kind of guy. I get flustered at tasks I am unable to complete, which is almost all of them. Things like grief and love and mourning. Things like being a husband, or being a son. The hard work of life that doesn’t get done, because there’s always more of it to do—I have trouble wrapping my head around these things. Whenever I was overwhelmed by the job of mourning, I recalled the words of the comedian Stephen Wright, who boasted, “I walked my dog all at once. I took him to Argentina and back, then I told him, ‘You’re done.’” I wish.
Dogs do not accept this logic, which is one of the reasons humans seem to need dogs around, just to remind us that nothing works this way, unfortunately. You have to walk that dog every day, with no mileage credit for what you did yesterday. Work doesn’t get finished, and neither does play. You start over every day, and what you don’t shave off today will be waiting tomorrow, until you run out of tomorrows and leave behind more work for others to do. You fight the sensation of getting overwhelmed by the repetition of things. You build up some momentum but you don’t get a climax. You don’t even know if you’ve done your day’s work right, because nothing’s ever really done. That’s very disconcerting to me.
That’s what being an adult is like, at least in the version of it that my dad passed on to me. The work of fatherhood must be like that, too—when he was the age I am now, I was already a sullen college student, and I can barely imagine the aggravation of having to live with a nineteen-year-old version of me, who was just like me now, except more so. That nineteen-year-old boy and I have our differences, but we both like to focus on one task, do it all day, do it to death, do it clean, and see it through to completion before moving on to the next task. It’s constantly a challenge to leave today’s work undone for tomorrow. We think adulthood would be simpler and more efficient if the world had the sense to conform to our rules.
My dad has done all sorts of tasks for me that I will never live long enough to find out about, thing I’ll never notice, much less thank him for. These are the tasks that do not have heroic completions or satisfactory results or purple ribbons. These are adult tasks that call for patience and diligence. These things seem to come so naturally to my dad; he always seems amused at the way others of us—like his son—have to
Similar Books
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s)
Robert Shearman, Toby Hadoke
