I had this moment the other week, catching sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, when I realized that I really could see my dad stare back at me. It was a disorienting instant, because for the most part, I don’t think that he and I look that alike at all — but I think that’s as much rooted in a misremembering of what he actually looked like versus the version in my memory, and my own mild body dysmorphia. (I say that somewhat glibly, but I always imagine myself taller and skinnier than I actually am.)
But, no: there he was, for the shortest of seconds. I could see him not only in my face (and in the whiteness of my beard, something that’s consistently a surprise to me; I feel like that went so white so quickly, as if it were just waiting for an excuse and then it received one in the stress of the past few years), but in my belly, my posture, my body as a whole. I looked in the mirror, and there he was, looking back.
It was something that stuck with me for awhile afterwards, as the shock of the moment mellowed out into something at first less stressful, and then almost grateful and happy for the feeling of continuity in my own life, and my family. A long time ago — a long time ago now, a lifetime, it feels like — I fretted and worried about essentially leaving my family to move to the States, and what that meant in an existential sense for me as… well, as a “McMillan,” whatever that might mean. Was I surrendering some essential part of me that I couldn’t put my finger on, in leaving my home country?
Seeing myself transform, even for the briefest of seconds, into my own father in the mirror was a surprise, welcome reminder that some things linger and remain, even when you’re not aware of them, even when you don’t think that they’re there.