Now that I’ve done the most dangerous thing that I usually do in a day, riding my bike, I can confidently say that as of today, I’ve lived longer than my father did. It’s… disquieting how not-old I feel.

I know comparison is the thief of joy, but that doesn’t stop me from comparing myself to the man I got half my DNA from.

Work? Dad was a hot shot scientist, at least early on. I’ve been hacking and slacking my way through life. He did live long enough to see me be a disappointment, but he had the grace not to say so.

Relationships? He found Mrs. Right at the age of 21, and death parted them. He did, however, make her miserable on some occasions; she admitted that even before the dementia really took hold. Dad had acquired some antiquated attitudes about women from his own father, whom he idolized for reasons the rest of the family never figured out. And oh by the way, in many ways Ex is a better person than my mother was, so I get points for taste.

Raising kids? Well, if you look at the self-sufficiency score, I’m not doing so well, even if I don’t know what, if anything, I should have done differently. And as for raising kids who aren’t terrible people, I’m one for one, and my parents are two for three. But again, I don’t know what they could have done differently, and having been there myself, I’m loath to second guess either of them. I will note, though, Dad’s lack of enthusiasm for the whole parenting project; he seemed to have gotten the idea that it wasn’t really his job, possibly from his father again.

The whole sex switcheroo? Maybe he would have been OK with it; maybe not. I know he was deeply emotionally invested in having a son. I got coerced into little league baseball and reading James Fennimore Cooper. However, Dad was anti-racist and prided himself on being more enlightened than average. And I had Mom in my corner. Maybe he would have come around after a while the way Good Sister did.

If he’d been in my shoes, would he have had the guts to do what I did? I think not. He was a fifties organization man, back before that stopped working for everybody. He did once get me aside and tell me he had some cross-gender… what was the word he used, feelings? But at that point I was running away from them myself, so I didn’t want to hear anything further. I’ve regretted that, but now that I think about it, maybe he had nothing constructive to say.

One thing sticks out in my memory: a few years before Mom died and well into the course of her dementia, she said that Dad told her, “I’m a failure. You’re a failure too.” I hope Mom confabulated that. If not, it breaks my heart, because he wasn’t a failure. I know I’m not.