Why Have I Turned Into My Dad?

When I look in the mirror or at photos of myself, I see my dad. Yes, I know that I look like my mom in some ways. I have her nose (and not my dad’s) and her small stature. But I still see my dad in the mirror. I have his broad forehead and his cheekbones, his strong jawline. I have always had at least his own sense of ambition and his drive to “change the world.”

I have left my dad’s church and in many ways, I insist that I am not like my dad at all. I have so many strong feelings about his refusal to ever accept responsibility for his physical abuse (which he denied until the day he died) and for him never changing in any way that mattered to his family.

And yet, when he was in his early fifties, he had a heart attack and in some very visible ways, changed his life dramatically. The dad I’d grown up with always said to me, “I’d rather die than not enjoy my porkchop and gravy.” Yet after his heart attack, he decided that actually, he’d rather live. He may well have earned himself another thirty years of life (or more) by going on a hunt for information about how to stop heart disease and accepting the very difficult life change that was required. He became a radical, whole foods vegan. He never ate dessert again (that I ever saw). He didn’t put oil on anything he ate. He ate fish very rarely. He sometimes ate an entire watermelon for breakfast, with a snack of several ounces of raw nuts. This man was so dedicated to his diet, he wouldn’t eat tofu or soymilk because they were “too processed.”

I’m no longer vegan, as I was in the years after he did his best and succeeded in convincing me and several other family members to also became vegan. Yet I think that the idea that whole foods vegan eating is the pinnacle of health comes from my dad. Even more from my dad is the desire to find the pinnacle of anything and then to choose after it wholeheartedly.

Is this a bad thing or a good thing about me? I have no idea.

My dad also started exercising regularly on an indoor bike every day because the information he found showed him that daily exercise was important for heart health. I have no delusions that he enjoyed the exercise because he stopped as soon as he broke a sweat. I have no idea why he thought that was the level he needed to achieve, but he did.

I observe that after the major life crisis of my daughter’s death, I also started exercising far more rigorously than I had before. I didn’t only become like my dad, but I surpassed him. I have far more intense tools to track my exercise than he ever became interested in. But my dad was a scientist. I am certain that if he were a decade younger, he’d have become a marathon runner like my older brother. He’d have gotten a smart watch and tracked how many miles on each pair of shoes. He’d have been crazy like that.

I am crazy like that.

A number of the kids are crazy like that.

And I know it comes from my dad. My mom is perfectly content to go on walks while pushing a grandchild in a stroller, or these days, pushing her walker for stability (she is 94).

My dad got home from the hospital after heart surgery and got on his bike for several hours to “make up” for exercise he’d missed. This sounds very sad and a little funny. But when I told my kids, they pointed out that I’d done almost exactly the same thing. When I got sent home from the ER with kidney stones, my main concern was getting in a workout before we left on a trip. I got 1 hour of sleep that night. And 1 hour of a bike ride. Was that because I needed to check it off my list or because I needed the endorphins? I have no idea. I suspect my dad didn’t, either.

I’m aware that my love of reading and stories comes from my mom. I’m aware that I learned many skills from her (my cooking with whatever is on hand in the fridge, for instance, and my refusal to throw anything away). I’m also aware that my dad’s personality was stronger than hers, and that is part of the equation in seeing my dad in myself.

Recently, I did something that was even more like my dad than I’d ever thought possible. I’m still grappling with what it means. Am I doing what he did because of his example? Or do I actually value the same thing he did? It would be very strange to find out that any of our values are remotely the same, in part because I’ve built most of my life trying to do the opposite of what he did.

Genes are strong, my friends. That’s all.