Baba

My entry for May 22nd, 2008:

I hugged my father after very long the other day. And I felt myself feeling, for the first time in a long while, how much I was his, how much we are alike, and like being alike, in that pleasurable, comfortable way that somehow we had lost since, since when? Since I had started using eye shadow, and hanging up the phone whenever he entered my room, and crying at the dinner table for no earthly reason, and preferring the company of strangers to home, and in general, not being any longer the small fat girl in unraveling pigtails and oversized T-shirts who sat cross-legged beside him as we watched television together, offering him my imitations of the ironic wisecracks on the programs we saw, always listening for his laughter, always proudly repeating my joke, again and again, trying to keep the laughter alive between us.

I know with my wedding and with the way I talk of my man somewhere deep inside he feels his day had passed. He knows I’ll always love him, of course, but he thinks it will not be in the same way. He feels he is no longer the man in his little girl’s life. But I wish I could tell him “Baba, you win gold” and tell him that he will always remain my hero and no matter how much I grow up my hand will always fit inside his and I will always love him and look up to him in a way he could never imagine. I know it will be awkward to verbally tell him all this now, but I am praying he understood a bit of it when I hugged him. You daughters will understand.

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