Well, this is a very rough project. I wrote it a couple years ago, but I'm dragging it out to use in a Toastmaster's speech next week. So I thought I'd get some comments, to see where I need to improve it, before I start editing.
I'm not sure how to explain what made me decide to write this. But I did.
Like Father, Like Son
Today, I looked in the mirror, and didn't see my reflection. I looked as hard as I could, but try as I might, I was not there. Instead looking out of the mirror at me was a face I knew almost as well. That face was the face of my father. I knew as I looked at it that it was the same face. The same smile was there, the same twinkling eyes, even the same unuly hair that my father always had to force to follow his comb.
The first memory I have of me and my father together was when I was three or four. I sat in his seat on his tractor, and he stood on the ground beside me, his arm around my shoulder. I remember my mother took a picture of it. We still have the picture somewhere in the house, in the red photo album.
“Wow,” she said, “You look just like your father.” But I didn't understand at the time. I must have looked at my father, seen how tall he was, seen his strong arms and his big hands, because I know I must have said “No way. I'm not like daddy.” I wanted to be like my father, but I couldn't see then how much we were alike.
Time passed, as it always does. First, weeks went by, then months and years, until time was blurred, and I didn't know what had happened when. Soon I was a teenager. Now I could see myself in my father. We had pictures of him as a child, and I was starting to look like them. Tall, gangly, glassed, and with a tangle of hair, I was the very image of my father, and I knew it. In fact, daily I was told I looked like him.
But I was young then, and foolish, as teenagers are. I didn't want to be like my father. I thought that by becoming like him, my own achievements would be diminished, forever lost under being my father's son.
And so people would tell me “Wow. You look just like your father.” But I must have looked at him, seen how great he was, seen how small I was, just starting to be my own person. “No way,” I said. “I'm not like daddy.” I could see how alike we were, but I didn't want to be like him at all.
Today, I looked in the mirror, and I saw another man staring back at me. That man was my father. He had the same glasses, the same hair, the same beard. He had the mouth that could twitch that wonderful smile that showed he was proud. Today, I looked in the mirror and saw that I was my father.
I am older now, and look at myself, and my father. I see where he is, I see what he can do. How he can win people over with a few words. How he can smile and laugh and make people's trouble's vanish. How he has a wonderful family, a house, and a job. I look at my father and see how respected he is, and how many people love him.
Today, someone said to me “Wow. You look just like your father.” I looked at them with a wry smile. I thought of all the jokes I've borrowed from my father, all the things he's taught me, of everything he's done that I wished I could do. “No way,” I said, proudly, thinking of who I am, and who I want to be. “I am not like daddy. But I will be, someday soon”
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