Fatherly Wisdom

My sister and I are going to visit our father who art in Massachusetts in a few weeks. We're going to head up to his place for the weekend and do a little candlepin bowling and then all watch the SuperBowl together, which seems like it'll be a nice little trip with enough pre-planned activities built in to keep all of us from stressing.

I really like spending time with my Dad, probably because I don't do it that often, but especially now that I have the perfect excuse to pick his brain for knowledge on everything from electric razors to what kind of tie to wear on a job interview (something with personality! show them you're not a drone of a worker bee!). We get along better than ever since I've matured into being his eldest son, and I sort of feel like we need to make up for lost time with the whole Father-Son thing.

Not to mention the fact that he's a guy who's been around a few different blocks a few times, so he's pretty familiar with what's what and who likes it that way. That being said, he's not of the same radical, consciousness-has-been-raised crowd that I generally spend my time with. So I feel like his perspective is both informed but also quite different from my friends/peers, and I appreciate getting his take on things.

I remember back in the early days of my transition when I fretted a bit to him about what I was going to "end up like." I don't even recall if I was talking specifically about my appearance or my identity or what. He came back with something like "Well, I don't know if this makes much sense, but it seems to me that as you go through with this, you're going to end up more and more like yourself."

Which was, of course, spot-on. These days, I feel more like me than I ever have before, even if I still have the same old post-college-grad "who am I??" crises about what I'm doing with my life. At least I know whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to do it as me.

Anyway, I keep meaning to write down as much as I can of the little bits of fatherly wisdom that I pick up when I'm with my dad. After all, with masculinity being the learned social construction that it is, when I'm around a teacher I ought to at least take good notes.