It is inevitable. It is built in. It is frightening beyond words. If you would rather live in blissful ignorance until it is too late, don't read any further. If you are brave enough to face the truth, read on, Oh Courageous One.
Here is the woeful, painful, ironic reality that will drive you nuts:
We are becoming our parents.
Three generations of Bensons sat in the living room comparing little toes. We noticed that the pinky toes of our left feet were immovable. Our right foot pinky toes flexed and pulled, the muscles responding to our mindful control. Our minds were not strong enough to convince similar motion from the left foot pinky extremity.
As if that's not scary enough, what is true of pinky toes is also true of emotions, behavior, and aging. When I look at myself through the lens of my father, I recognize that I bear a stronger resemblance to him in the way I fix my breakfast than in the way my male pattern baldness is developing, which is a pretty jagged pill to take if you've seen the back of my head. My dad ate oatmeal every stinking day, the same brand, the same thick-paste consistency, doused in half-and-half, eaten with the same chewing sounds. Not one of these eccentricities could be altered without a major depression setting in.
Ah, but I'm different! I don't eat oatmeal!
I insist on a half grapefruit, lightly dusted with sugar, with hot coffee from fresh ground beans. This is followed by a bagel, not the bready, yeasty, cheap kind from the grocery store, but a boiled and baked bagel from Elaine's. I won't eat it unless it is cut in half and toasted hard. I add cream cheese, which I spread carefully around the bagel for about ten minutes. If this is not what I eat for breakfast, I can be a little grumpy. OK - I can be downright suicidal.
But at least I am not like my dad! Nope! No oatmeal for me!
This is what is so aggravating: I have fought my whole life long, all of fifty years, NOT to be my father. Sure, Dad had some admirable qualities which I pray to emulate. He was faithful. He was a great preacher and pastor. He could be fun, and he was sacrificial. He understood grace.
But, just like you, there is a part of me that says: I will not be like my father. I will be my own person! I will be an individual! I will not fall to the same error and weakness and emotional pile of contradictory angst that was clear and present in my father when I was a teenager. I will not be set in my ways, will not be stubborn and moody, will not get stuck in the deep ruts on the edge of life. I will live free. (Can you hear violins?) I will be wild and adventurous. (Tympani can be heard softly as strings rise in dynamic tone.) I will step off the road and into the unknown every chance I get! (Horns make their entrance.) I will not be fettered by the genetic code of my forebears! (Reaching crescendo!) I will be ME!
But before that, could you pass the cream cheese?
In memorium.
Stanley Alvarado Benson
08/02/1919 - 07/01/2004
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