“See, dad?” she said. “It’s your stubble. See? It looks just like you.”
“Yeah, alright,” I said. “Look at that. Just like me.”
It didn’t look like me. It didn’t look ANYTHING like me.
Actually, I wish I looked like it. This clay pen holder my daughter made me. A friend down the street … well, her mother has a kiln and some clay. How cool is that? They made Father’s Day presents. Clay cups with faces on them. To hold pens. You’ve never officially been a kid until you’ve made your dad a clay cup with his face on it. The first recorded Father’s Day cup with a face on it dates back to 10,000 B.C. There was also a figure made out of macaroni and a drawing of a race car that read, “Dad drive fast,” with a police car chasing him.
My cup had vampire-like eyebrows. A short nose that didn’t jut out like an X-ACTO blade. Piercing eyes. A debonair smile. A hole in the head for pens. (How handy would that be! I would love a hole in my head. I could keep snacks in there.) I thought he was handsome. I wanted to be the cup.
And then there was brown stuff all over his chin. Little dabbled on spots of paint covering the entire lower third. A forest of it.
Stubble!
Cool stubble. Good-looking stubble. Dare I say it? Sexy.
It was Don Johnson in “Miami Vice” stubble. Not like in real life. Like I’ve been playing in dirt all morning. Or eating Oreo cookies during a drunken fit.
It’s funny what kids see when they look at us. Mine sees stubble. It’s been the bane of her existence since she was a child. She has always endured it as I went in for a kiss.
“Ahh, sand paper!” she would scream. Or, “Ahh, prickly pears!” Or, “Ahh, shards of glass! Quick … take me to the hospital!”
It was always followed by: “Go … shave … right now, mister!”
“I just did!” I would tell her. “It’s not my fault my stubble grows like kudzu and feels like a cactus. I’m Cuban and Sicilian, dangit!”
On my face, that’s my distinguishing characteristic. I’m “Stubbleman!” Bum-bum-BUMMM! (That and the ski jump nose. She obviously ran out of clay for that one.)
I get a kick out of how kids see us. I would love to see some of the things I created for my dad. He had a beard. Beards are nearly impossible to do on clay cups. Not impossible, just hard to get right.
You have two options. Rake the clay with a comb, which makes your father’s face look like a newly plowed field. Or roll out some facial hair, which makes his chin look like Medusa’s head. “Why are there snakes writhing out of my cheeks!?!”
I now understand some of the looks my creations got. “Hey, buddy … thanks! It looks … um … just like me. Will you excuse me for a minute? I need to go shave off the beard I’ve had for 30 years.”
Father’s Day gifts make us dads see us for what we really look like. Sometimes they’re spot on. Sometimes a little off. “I don’t look like a lump of hamburger meat, do I?”
They’re how our children see us. And I’ve always wondered about that. Don’t you? What they think of us? How they picture us? Strong and courageous and triumphant? Or meek and wimpy and sad? “I don’t look like wilted spinach, do I?”
Then there’s that big giant smile on my cup. Like the Joker on Batman. I would need cosmetic surgery — a jaw re-adjustment — just to get close to it in real life. It forms a “U.” That warms my heart. Makes it a special Father’s Day gift. That she sees me that way. Happy. Full of smiles. And, of course, surrounded by a forest of handsome “Miami Vice” stubble.