My wife is smiling. We’re on the final stretch to my dad’s house on our midterm break in Derry and I can’t resist pointing out places of interest. ‘That’s where the Tillie & Henderson factory used to be,’ I say. I’m just about to tell her that it was mentioned in Das Kapital, but she says it first, while rolling her eyes. She’s been coming here with me for 15 years and I have a habit of repeating myself. Worse, since the first 10 years of these visits involved my dad driving us around and telling these exact same things, I am repeating himself.
Becoming your own father is something most men grapple with when they talk to their kids. I’d simply prefer not to do so with my own wife. I purse my lips and resist the urge to indicate where the old checkpoint used to be at Nixon’s Corner.
