Image by nongpimmy
On the surface I married a man who is nothing like my father.
Dad is a sports guy, through and through. One of his most defining-and endearing-characteristics is his love of the games. Any games, really, other than baseball, which he barely tolerated when my son played Little League.
Though it’s hard to imagine looking at him today-in fact, it makes for great slapstick in my head-my dad was once a gymnast. He even wrote his masters thesis on the Loop Dismount off the Side Horse, though by then he had bulked up considerably and was doing more tackling than tumbling. He played football at UCLA and it was a football coaching job at Santa Barbara City College that brought us to town. He was also Athletic Director there for what felt like decades. It seemed like he never missed a game. He still helps out with the women’s golf team, although I think it’s more for the free time on the links than anything else. Dad is definitely a sports guy. Even in retirement, he spends much of his time obsessively studying whatever’s on ESPN, checking his Fantasy Football league updates, and rooting for the Lakers.
It’s not that Zak is not athletic. He’s actually very graceful. He played water polo for a while, but couldn’t understand why the other guys took it so seriously. And now he swims masters to keep in shape. But the athletic fields were never his true calling. The only blocking he did in high school was on stage, and even then he was more motivated by access to cute senior girls than he was by curtain calls. In college he joined the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, where his fishnet clad high kicks took him to off-off-Broadway and Bermuda.
If I ever want to make my dad squirm, all I have to do is pull out the Newsweek photo of my husband in drag. Come to think of it, Zak’s own father wasn’t particularly comfortable with that picture either.
Zak is long and lean, while my dad is round and cuddly. My husband will nurse a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Heath Bar Coffee Crunch for at least a week, if we let him. He likes nothing better than to morsel a bite or two out at a time as a late night treat, smoothing out the ice cream’s edges so it looks like it’s fresh from the factory.
As a kid I remember my dad also liked to smooth out his ice cream, but his style was different than Zak’s. He bought gallons rather than pints, and instead of a bite or two each night; dad would eat all except a bite or two in one sitting. Then, he’d smooth the miniscule remnants up into the plastic window of the lid, so that it looked like an entire gallon of ice cream remained untouched-until you picked it up and it was light as air. Truth be told, I’ve never been sure if he did this to hide the evidence that he ate all the ice cream, or because he was too lazy to throw the container away.
Dad’s a plugger and a plodder who plows his way through just about everything he does. If slow and steady wins the race then my dad would win every time. When he jogs it looks like walking to the rest of us, and when he hurries, it looks like a relaxed pace, but he gets the job done eventually, and he’s nothing if not consistent.
Zak, on the other hand, spends ridiculous amounts of time trying to think of the most efficient ways to do just about everything. Consequently, even if it appears to only take him five minutes to complete a task, it may have taken ridiculous amounts of time to do just about anything.
They both drive me up the wall with irritation, and make me laugh so hard I cry.
On the surface they couldn’t be more different, but inside they’ve both got hearts as big as oceans. They both love to play, have fun and be with their families. And my son and I both know that deep inside where it counts we’ve got the best two dads in the world.