Everything my father taught me, he said I needed to know. How to read, how to swim, how to throw a punch. He framed most things in the context of survival, so his lessons always had a sense of urgency and toughness. I soaked in everything he had taught me because as a kid, I wanted to be just like him, and I believed that to be like him was to prove a connection, that we’re parts of each other.

The summer after I turned 15, he taught me how to shoot. He said I needed to learn how to become so familiar with something that it becomes a part of my body. He taught me how to position myself to lessen the impact of a shotgun’s kickback. But when we went out, I would brace myself for the recoil and still get bruised. I didn’t know if this meant it wasn’t a part of my body yet or if what’s a part of me still has the potential to hurt me.

It was around this age I realized there was a lot I picked up from my father I didn’t like, so I stopped trying to be like him. I told him I never liked guns and I turned down any invitation for target practice. As years went by, the more we disagreed on, the less we shared, and the worse we handled it all. Like pulling triggers aimed at the gun-smoked sky and bracing for the recoil.

But even during that time, I found myself telling people about my father, the stories he told, the memories I had. On a good day, when someone pointed out how clearly I am my father’s daughter, even though we didn’t talk, it was my source of pride.

It’s only in recent years I’ve begun to explore the history of our relationship, the ways I oscillate between one end of the spectrum of how I view him and the other. The day after Christmas, I joined him at the shooting range for the first time in years. He was excited I was there and more excited when my aim was sharp. I left with a bruised arm and the first intentional portraits I’ve made of my father.

After a month at home, I told him that out of our family, we’re still the most similar. He said, “We both have bad tempers,” and we laughed. With age and effort, we’ve calmed down a lot. The occasional argument, naturally, but I can’t deny we’ve come a long way from what we used to be — a matching pair of smoking guns pointed at the sky.