It’s funny how as a kid we resent, despise or sometimes even hate our parents for the restrictions and scoldings we get from them. We spend our days waiting for the time we will be the adult and no one can tell us what to do. Then we seem to reach a point later in life where, probably, most of us begin to realize that our parents were doing a job and we can say they did their best, and most do. It is not an easy job and I recently heard a statistic that said 80% of all parents at one time wished they had not been parents. I can understand! But there also seems to come a point when we become the parent to our parents.

I moved away from my childhood home 11 years ago and visit on occasion. I could not be happier that I left, and am reminded every time I go back there just how great San Francisco is. On the occasion this photograph was taken, I asked my dad to look at me while he was sitting at the table. He absolutely abhors having his photograph taken and perhaps that is where I got it from, but he sat there and gave me the “I hate this and am miserably uncomfortable” grin that is obvious in this photograph. It took me just two minutes to get about eight shots. I knew I had to move quickly and it was the look of misery that made the photograph. Well, that and all the crap that has overtaken my dad’s kitchen. I’ll just say my pops is a collector of sorts. But I knew that this was the opportunity to catch him at his barest and most vulnerable self.

Over the years I have learned to get people comfortable enough with me that the truest of their emotions and feelings come out in their photographs. I knew my dad was uncomfortable, embarrassed and annoyed with my request to photograph him in this mess and admittedly, I knowingly took advantage of him. That is my job. If I did not take advantage of people in this way, I would never get the photographs that they love of themselves. Not that my dad loves this image. He rather hated it and never looked at it again. But it is this image of him that I will always remember. As a man with a cluttered house, and a cluttered life and mind, who could not have been any more honest and naked than at that moment.

I am so opposite my father that I wonder sometimes if perhaps, just perhaps, the milkman made an extra stop one day. However, the time has come that I have become the parent and it makes me truly wonder about the relationships of past lives. Yes, past lives. I believe we select our parents. For whatever reason it may be, we select them. Sometimes our choices outright suck and sometimes we do really, really well. I also believe in past lives. It is the only way to explain the “old soul” and “young soul.” So I wonder now what the relationships are that we have had in the past that have led to this one. I really think my dad is the young soul and I’m the old soul. Which I find odd that I came into this life as his child. Why didn’t I come back as the parent in the first place? Is it because he beat me to the punch and came back earlier by 22 years?

I look at this photograph and it brings up two different emotions, a lot of emotion actually. When I took it, I was laughing and just loved the images that I knew I was capturing. Now, a bit of time later and in new circumstances in both our lives, it brings up very different feelings. I don’t find it funny but sad. I don’t see my dad as a somewhat happy person but as a sad person in the making. It doesn’t make me the least bit happy for him but this is the photograph that represents him the best, unfortunately.

So in my next life will he even be there? Will I be the parent to him? Will I be able to do a better job of communicating with him than he allows me to now? He will never read this which is good as he would hate it, nope, absolutely detest it and, I do feel as if I have betrayed him. At this time though, this image has been consuming my thoughts. Not the image but what the image represents and the concern that I have for the man in the photograph.

I’m saddened with the idea that this photograph has really made a different impression on me than when I took it. Obviously I have grown in some way to be able to see it differently and feel a completely opposite emotion than when I took it. I see my child, who needs guidance and scolding and wonder if he will resent me for doing my job.

In my honesty of writing this I sure as hell hope he my dad doesn’t ever read this, because my 37 year-old ass is seriously grounded.