I look like my dad

he's alright, i guess

I have only one memory of my grandfather. We went to a diner and he bought me pancakes. I must have been eight, maybe nine. I remember he told me that I had grown up so much, that the last time he saw me I was just a baby, that I looked just like my dad.

I didn’t see him again after that. My dad never got along with him. Something about an abusive household, getting kicked out, words that can’t be taken back, memories tainted forever by images of rage and cruelty. There was no way I could have a relationship with my grandfather, though in all honesty, I didn’t really mind. I didn’t have an emotional attachment to him, and unlike my father, I didn’t look at him and see myself. In all things but his blood, he was just a stranger to me, and although my dad spent far more time with him than I did, I’m sure he felt the same way.

As I grew older, the less my father and I saw eye to eye on the kinds of topics that are non-negotiable for me. The things he started to believe in, the political rhetoric, the racism, the insanity of it, it was all too much for me to watch, to listen to, to argue with. But as the years passed, the more I started to miss him. I missed his lewd jokes, his deep voice, his rough hands, his cigarette smell, his one-liners, even the insanity of his beliefs that I despised so much. I reached out to him, he reached back, but as our conversations ran thin, I was quickly reminded of why we stopped talking. Eventually, our texts stopped, and he didn't reach back out.

Of course, I was a little hurt by this. Even though I didn’t want to talk to him, part of me wondered if he felt the same way about me. What was wrong with me? How fucked up am I for a man like him to not want my conversation? I did my best to push it out of my mind, but that’s hard to do when every time I look in the mirror, I see his face staring back at me.

In more recent years, I believe I’ve taken on more of my mom’s qualities, not just in personality, but in my face as well. It only comes out when I do certain things, like smile. Though, like my dad, I smile with my whole face, eyes squinted, almost closed, the shape my lips make when I smile resembles my mom more than anything. We share a weird pinky toe, my nose is slightly thinner, like hers, and sometimes, during certain hours of the day, there’s a glint in my eye that others claim looks like her. When my face remains indifferent, unsmiling, serious, I look like him. It’s almost like I was printed out, made to look like his twin, a long lost brother, an anomaly lookalike. He showed me a photo of himself as a kid once. I was in elementary school when I looked at his picture for the first time. I remember being confused, scrambling through my memories trying to figure out when that photo of me was taken, asking him where I was, who was there, what we were doing. He laughed and said it wasn’t me I was looking at, but him. I didn’t believe him at first, though when my gaze focused his buoyant afro and slightly darker skin, I realized he was telling the truth, and I wondered how I could miss those features at first glance.

As a kid, looking like my dad was something I took pride in. Before I knew about his worst qualities, I saw him as a hero, as I think most young boys see their fathers. Once I was in high school, things changed. I no longer wanted the features I stole from his face, as handsome as they were. I wanted to be someone else entirely, someone who I couldn’t be compared to, someone who I could distance myself from as much as possible. Sometimes I think I’m being too harsh, that he doesn’t deserve my bitterness, but then I remember who he is, the things he says, the people he’s hurt, the worst qualities I also stole from him, and I am filled with resolve once more.

That, more than anything, is what I find difficult to reconcile about looking like my father: The similarities don’t end with our facial features. When I lie, when I’m stubborn, when I’m jealous, when I’m argumentative, I think of him. He is all of these things and more, and although I don’t share his worst traits, we share the ones severe enough to dismantle a romantic relationship, or ruin a friendship.

When I started thinking about my grandfather again and the kind of relationship he had with my dad, I was reminded of who we are now. We hardly speak, we don’t see each other, we don’t wish each other happy birthday or happy New Year. Like my grandfather, my dad has become a stranger to me, and yet some of my favorite things in the world started with him. My favorite video game, Skyrim, began with him. We would stay up all night playing it, walking around the greenery, listening to the music, music I still play when I go to bed. My favorite kinds of stories, film or novel, are the ones about imperfect fathers and reluctant sons. My earliest memory of rap music, N.W.A., Tupac, OutKast, all started with him. These fundamental moments in my life, moments that made me into the man I am today, were because of him, and yet he’s now as unknown to me as any passing stranger on the street.

We don’t see each other, but I see him every day. Some days I like my thick lips, my curly hair, my brown skin, my wide eyes, but most of the time I find it hard to look at myself and not feel a twinge of guilt and shame and anger. These feelings don’t separate themselves by day, they come together in one malignant package, so that it’s almost impossible for me to feel truly happy without being reminded of whose smile I wear.

When I look at the picture of the three of us above, I don’t know how to feel. My grandfather, so cold, so distant to my own father, smiles with a shy sincerity that I rarely see in other people. As he carries me, I reach out to my father’s hand, inches away from mine. He isn’t smiling with his entire face as I do, but he looks happy nonetheless. I wish I knew what they were thinking in that moment. Three generations of Brewsters, captured in a single moment that would not be replicated again. I realize now that I can’t find the words to end whatever this post is supposed to be. Truthfully, despite feeling as though I needed to talk about my dad, it’s been really difficult getting the words out. There’s no real point to this, no conclusion, no final message. All I know is that I look like my dad. Sometimes that’s enough, sometimes it isn’t.