Daddy,
I was playing We're Not Really Strangers with Parnika and Ananya once, and the question was, "Describe yourself in one anecdote." I'm not sure what mine would be, but yours came to mind instantly -- I'm seven, waiting eagerly for Avery to ring my doorbell and take me away from the endless math problems that awaited me at home. Five minutes pass. Then six. Seven? She never takes this long. I peer through the sliding door window, hoping to catch her bike whizzing into frame when I see her lying on the grass in front of our lawn, flipped entirely over her handlebars. I scream.
And before my mouth closes, you've hauled her small body into our living room and are placing frozen peas on all her joints and checking her skull for signs of a concussion. You shove our landline phone into my hands and tell me to call her parents -- I'm in shock, but I comply, another feature of our dynamic that would come to define our relationship. She's rushed to the hospital, given a filler tooth, and a week later, when Avery's mother is in our doorframe thanking you profusely for saving her daughter's life, you actually, physically shudder. "I didn't do anything," you argue. And it's true, at least to you, which is the most astounding part.
My mother always says she's glad I have a good relationship with my father. It's true, and somehow feels disingenuous. I have a good relationship with my Starbucks barista. What a bland word to describe my father. When I was younger, I dreamed that we'd one day be able to communicate without words -- in my head, we were referencing specific MATHCOUTS problems by their year and level alone, and it was a language enough. I think what we've grown to have is better, actually. Waking up in your house, I know what days of the week oatmeal will be sitting at my tableside seat, and when I'm expected to make my own peanut butter toast. You can feel when I'm dehydrated from three states away, and remember my friends by the diseases they've called you to discuss. When my passport is rejected for my work authorization form on campus, when I try to place a $400 Aritzia order and they make me prove I'm not a robot, when my friend crashes our rental car, my problem-solving toolkit is one weapon wide. I never learned independence, just your phone number.
I'm old enough now to see the burden you carry-- funding three degrees, three weddings, and two dowries fell on your untrained shoulders in your twenties, when you found yourself fatherless. And when you found yourself motherless, we had very little to say that could help. With a broken neck or back, with shingles or not, in pain and on drugs, the work of holding this roof upright never seems to end, but you do it anyway so we don't have to. I'm not sure you've ever felt that kind of love through service back, which breaks my heart a little bit. I wish I had known you before the world took its toll. I want to tell you two things: (1) we don't need you to exist just because you do chores for us, and (2) if men don't treat me like you would, they're immediately cut. I realize that is about me more than you, but I think you'd like to hear it, regardless.
When I was six, Mamma used to say I was a Mini-You. I wore this title like a medal; if you weren't wearing a sweater in the winter, neither would I. If you wanted ice cream at night, so did I. At twenty, I hope we have a little less in common -- I'd like to be a cleaner eater than you, and would like to smile at more strangers on the streets, even if I did inherit your RBF. But there is so much of who I am that I still hold with honor, only because it comes from you -- our quiet pride, our echo-doc observation skills, our street smarts, our knack for numbers. The way we say Ram Ram when something is ludicrous. The way nobody is ever alone, not if we have anything to say about it. You rush home when our neighbor's mother dies to sit with them for hours while they try to grapple with their grief. I therapize my friends through heartbreak and trauma, through the worst decisions they will ever make and the repercussions of them. My mother taught me what to say in every situation, but it was you who taught me what to do.
When I was younger, watching Friends for the first time, there was this advertisement for This Is Us that would frequently come on -- your father wasn't perfect, a crying woman would tell her son, but he was pretty damn close. I think you'd hate it if I called you perfect, or even pretty damn close. So instead, I'll say that you did the best you could do, which, considering your aggressive over-competence, is the best there is.
Comments
Post a Comment