If They Are Anything Like Me

You can’t help but compare.

Oh he has your eyes.

He has your mouth.

It’s a real ego spurt when someone says my sons look like me. I don’t know why, It just is. I’ve thought about it every now and then, in quiet moments after a good day when everything falls into place. I’ve thought about it and still don’t know why it makes me beam.

It just does.

At least it does until I really think about it. It can be quite damning. I am not the most handsome daddy out there. I am not the most successful, the most daring, the smartest, the coolest, the richest, the nicest - I am not much of anything except mediocre – and I’m not even the most at that.

I know people mean it as a compliment and I certainly take it as such, but when I really think about it, No, my sons shouldn’t look like me. They should be better. They should be more handsome, more successful, more daring, smarter, cooler, richer, nicer, and so on.

When I think about my life, I think about all of the opportunities I let go by because I was too scared to ask or too frightened to act. I think about all of the mistakes I’ve made and the people I’ve hurt because my ego got in the way of doing what my conscience told me to. I think of all of the loss and sadness that could have been avoided, if I were the right person at the right time.

It scares me sometimes to think that either of boys would end up like me. It scares me to think that they would end up on the wrong side of a situation that might bring them harm, physically or emotionally. I can’t watch Law & Order: SVU anymore because I have nightmares about my boys ending up as one of their stories “ripped from the headlines.” Every once in a while, something on the news, something on TV, will set me off and I’ll be awake nights upon nights, panicked over the possibility that that could happen to one of my kids.

And while my imagination runs wild setting up all sorts of desperate scenarios, I know that it would be just as equally painful (if not more) if I were to be overprotective or dominated their lives in some way.

If they are anything like me, they would hate me.