Geeky Talks
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[I stood in the isle and started to cry. It had been a long week, a good week, long in the way you hope summer will issue its good-bye and fall will gently take over. It had been full of new friends, new babies, and new houses. It never seemed more like this was our home. The realization wasn’t only comforting, it warmed me in small tingles. It was the sudden grasp of the distance, however, that brought the familiar sting of emotion to my eyes. This was now our home and our home was so very far away from where I started...]
Often when I glance at my youngest, I see another familiar face. I see pieces of my own and small bits of my husband, but even more than his parents, my son looks like my father. He is a living replica of the goofy baby picture I grew up seeing in my parent’s bedroom. His smile is the same. His chubby chin, his detached ears and his puffy cheeks are a color version of the black and white photo framed in the room my parents live in some two thousand miles away.
Sometimes as I’m watching Baby O, I hear the dozens of stories my father repeated throughout my childhood. They blaze at me, washing over me, in parts. The image of my father in his band uniform marching at an A&M football game. The pranks young boys played on each other, testing their new freedom, as college freshman (or “fish”), or the bellowing of his superior “surgebutts” (juniors). I hear him telling me, as a kid in Jr. High, how you make your closest friends in college. I recall army stories, adventures around the world, “playing camping” with the U.S. military. I hear him instill a sense of pride for our Country in his daughters, a sense of morality, a place in community that merges both optimism and sacrifice. To me, this is my father in essence. These are some of his proudest memories.
After thirty years of hearing my father’s expressions, they now come shooting out of my mouth. “She’s uglier than ten miles of dirt road!” “Jezus Christ on a Commode.” “Want a ‘sip, go to Austin.” I’ve taught my husband some of these sayings who now repeats them to our own daughter, clueless in their origination and lost on their meaning. But I always smile in the circle of family and the timeless way stories are passed.
It wasn’t until years after moving out that I appreciate how alike my father and I are. It wasn’t until six months ago I realized how alike our features are. It wasn’t until three months ago, staring in to my son’s face, that I realized how far two thousand miles seems. And it wasn’t until I heard of Dad’s diabetes, his aging, that I realized how little I see him and how very much I miss him.
Which is why I started crying in the vitamin isle at Costco. Because as I reached for the special formulated diabetes-preventive mutli-vitamin, it occurred to me that one day my own children will move far off and create their own homes and how badly I wanted to be healthy and agile to visit and be a part of their new traditions. But also, how much I wish my father would see that day, too. For now I’d settle for less than two thousand miles between the place I now call home and the one I knew as a young girl, a daughter, not unlike my own.
Sep, 14, 2007 Filed in: Write •Getting to know me •The Flinger Family •Mrs. Flinger Said So • Read the Archives 
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OMG, girl, he looks JUST like you as a baby! That is amazing.
Sweet.
My kid looks just like my husband, which makes me kinda sad - I mean, hubs is cute and all, but it’d be nice if some of my DNA made it down the chain as well.
It’s hard being so VERY far away from family, especially when you can see your parents start to get old. I never thought of my parents as OLD, but the more health issues they get and the longer it is between visits, the more I notice they are getting that way. It wasn’t as rough when we didn’t have kids (oh, wait- we lived closer then- and that was 8 years ago!), but I really miss them missing out on enjoying their grandchildren. But what can you do?!
It is hard thinking of your parents as getting older, especially when you hear about a health problem. I gotta go call me dad now…..
Great post. I can’t stand thinking of anyone growing older - me, my parents, CJ… why can’t time just STOP until I’m ready?!
I just wanted to say Greetings from Aggieland! I have been reading your blog for a few months and its nice to hear a blogger who actually knows where College Station is. My family has loaded up my 7 month old son with Aggie stuff and I am sure he will probably end up being a T-sip just to be different.
This post makes me sad, and it makes me miss my dad that lives over 3,000 miles away from me. :(
I am with you. Hawaii is a long ways off too…
If it makes you feel better, my Dad has been living with Type 2 diabetes for 13 years now. He was diagnosed when I was 14.
We worry about him quite a bit, as he eats total crap and doesn’t exercise, but his blood-numbers are always good now that he is on lots of medication. It’s disturbing to think of someone you love as so vulnerable, and also that that vulnerability may have been passed down to your children. But the things modern medicine can do with diabetes, really, are nothing short of amazing.
This is beautiful. Wah. I wish you weren’t taking a leave of absence. But I’ll see you @twitter.