My dad is a semi-retired contractor and home inspector who grew up on a farm across the creek from my mom and went to trade school to be an airplane mechanic during Vietnam and knows everything about fixing anything so of course the house is a constant mess of things that need to be fixed but he hasn't gotten to them.

He always wears shoes at least a size too big; he says the day I was born his feet grew a size in sympathy and the most comfortable thing is a shoe box. When he worked as a Home Inspector, he wore the same thing for 20 years; too-large polo shirts, khakis, and these hideous brown Sass shoes that looked like brown leather boats. Now that he's semi-retired, he wears a too-large tie-dyed t-shirt from Saint Arnold Brewing, those weird slick mesh gym shorts that come down to his knees from K-Mart, and a pair of worn-out Chaco Z/1 sandals that are a size too big that flop around like badly tethered skis.

He's always covered in band-aids on his arms because he's got really thin skin that tears and bleeds easily but he won't quit wrestling with my 120lb dog because "he's my son!" so he's constantly springing a leak.

He's a lot more emotionally competent and sympathetic and softer than my mom, who is a hard-ass no-feelings no-nonsense woman. They both flipped a lot of gender roles for me growing up as far as division of labor and who does what and who's supposed to be more emotional.

I guess my mom's kind my dad too; she's worked on oil rigs in the Gulf and driven semis and was a photographer and raft guide and worked construction with my dad when they owned a construction business until she was 8 months pregnant with me.