When I look in the mirror I see my father

Not too long ago I came across a quote from Harrison Ford. Now I have to tell you that I don't often look to Hollywood for wisdom but this one hit home. In an interview, responding to the tediously clever question: "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" he responded: "An old man needing a shave."

Well, it's obvious it stuck in my mind or I'd not remember it now. And it had an impact at the time because I looked in the mirror, saw an old man needing a shave, and stopped. Shaving that is.

Now I have a beard. So when I look in the mirror I see an old man trimming his whiskers.

Increasingly, though, when I look in the mirror, I can see my father. Oh, not all the time, just now and again, perhaps out of the corner of my eye. But, sure enough, there he is, looking out and saying something along the lines of: "I told you so."

He was a man who was much overshadowed by his own father.

Granddad was a powerful character, strong, self-made, humorous. Larger than life, a lot of people would say. I can well understand now how difficult his act must have been to follow though it's not something that ever occurred to me when he was alive. To me he was a marvellous old guy, gentle and encouraging. He pushed me to try everything, and his attitude when I failed wasn't condemnatory but, instead, exploratory. He'd not accept that there was anything that couldn't be fixed.

So looking back I can see why my father settled for being merely satisfactory. Not a bad aim for a man without special talent or skill. I can't honestly recall any area in which he failed. Nor, no matter how hard I look, can I find an instance of his excelling in anything. Not mediocre. Just satisfactory.

Oh I've plenty of memories of him, of course. A London fireman during WW2, he was a figure who was around in my childhood when so many other kids' fathers were away. His career wasn't marked by glory or achievement. The most notable event was when, during an air raid, he was blown off a ladder in the blast of a bomb, damaging his back and a toenail. The back healed, with bed rest - I can see him laying on a trestle and board bed in the front room of our house even now. The toenail was never the same, though.

His attitude to me was friendly and cozily father-and-son. All my childhood was spent in time of war and the aftermath of war and I remember the feeling of warm safety he gave me when things were bad. When I was with my Dad nothing too bad was going to happen. Not to me, anyway.

These were the days when a child who transgressed was punished. I can't recall that Dad ever punished me unjustly or to excess. The balance was, well, satisfactory. I learned but I wasn't harmed. I didn't feel too bad about it at the time and, even in these "blame everyone but yourself for your failings" days I can't say I feel bad about it now.

If he had a failing it was that he'd always do anything to avoid unpleasantness. Or failure. The ghost of his father was looking over his shoulder all the time, waiting for that. So my Dad wasn't adventurous. He didn't take risks. He didn't adopt enthusiasms. He might get in the boat but he'd never rock it. Equilibrium was a passionless passion for him.

As I grew up and went my way we drifted apart. When we met there wasn't much more than politeness on either side. He'd be interested in what I'd done but not involved. By then he'd lost his sense of distance to a flat, dimensionless TV screen. There is no distance in television and when television is all there is in your life you tend to lose your distance vision. He was happy, though. Happy enough. Didn't want more than he'd got. Didn't envy those who had more.

In his final years he developed something of the robust jollity of his own father and was able to relax a little. Not too much. Just enough. He'd sit in the corner of the kitchen and chuckle, rubbing his hands together hard, enjoying the joke.

When he died, and he wasn't much older than I am now, he did so mostly because it seemed the right thing for him to do. He'd been ill a number of times and although the doctors got him on his feet again it was only for long enough to get to his TV chair. I shed a tear of course, remembering when, and settled to the task of sorting out his affairs. Not that there was much to do. The books were balanced. No debts. No riches. Nothing for anyone in the family or out of it to argue about. Satisfactory.

And then, well, life moved on. In the intervening years I thought less and less often about him until, and I confess it, it got to the point where I couldn't really remember what he had looked like.

But now I do. When I look in my mirror I can see him looking out. The same eyes. The same complexion. He's there as a young man and as an old man, smiling, not saying much. I don't feel haunted by him. It's nice to be prompted to remember those days we were father and son. And there's nothing sad about it. Just a safe feeling that, after all, he's still around. Safe, and warm. Satisfactory.

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