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(24)
困シせん
へに飛かい… him to dress like a doctor or lawyer, but he always dressed like my
What my father wore embarrassed me as a young man. I wanted
*I
をさせる
father. He wore old jeans and snapped shirts.
I blamed the way he dressed for my social failures. I felt that girls
5 laughed at me because they' d seen him mowing" the grass in cut-offs"
and black boots. I asked him what even at age fourteen struck me as
cruel and wrong. “Why," I asked, "don' t you dress 'nice," like my
friends' fathers?" He held me with his sad, shocked eyes and searched
2.
for an answer.
Then he said, "I like my clothes."
An hour later my mother stormed into my room, slapped* me hard
OT
across the face and called me an “ungrateful little fool." ①In time
they forgave me, and as I matured I realized that girls avoided me not
because of my father but because of his son. ②I realized that my
mother had slapped me because my father could not, and it soon
15 became clear that what he had really said that night was that there are
things more important than clothes. He' d said he couldn' tspend even
five cents on himself because there were things I wanted. Without
another word, my father said, "You' re my son, and I make sacrifices
so that your life will be better than mine."
For my high-schoo! graduation, my father arrived in a suit.
0%
Somehow he seemed taller, more handsome and impressive. It wasn' t
the suit, of course, but theman. I didn' t see it again until his funeral.
On the morning of his funeral, I took the suit out of his closet and
changed into it. I gathered up the courage to study myself in his
25 mirror, where I appeared small and insignificant. ③AndI stood there
for some time, facing myself in my father' s mirror, weeping and trying
to imagine-
my father' s clothes.
(注)mow 草を機械で刈る
slap 平手でたたく
grow into
(H14. 3)
cut-offs ひざ上で切ったジーンズ
-as I will for the rest of my life the day IlI
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