WM: Father's Day
5. Ficlet: In honour of Father's Day, have your muse write a fic about fathers or fatherhood. Who is a father figure for them or who in their lives might they play the father to? Or, talk about the relationship of your muse to their father in detail.
Father's Day is quite possibly my least favourite holiday.
I can associate nothing good with this day this year. Around me, I watch children with their fathers, toddlers laughing and smiling as daddy tells them how wonderful his cup is, teenagers sulkily handing over gifts that bely more thought than any teenager wishes to be seen putting into a gift. Adults, appreciating what time they have, understanding how little time it could be in a way that their younger self never could have.
My last father's day with him was hollow and withdrawn. I was old enough to understand his detachment for what it was, if not for its cause. I was still young enough - I laugh at the word with a coldness I regret in myself - to believe that things would change, that there was always next year.
I sent him a card, across the ocean. His birthday hadn't warranted one, and Christmas is a non-event in Chennai, but that day I thought to try, to just remind him of the family he had left behind. angry and hurting but missing him.
He never replied. I don't even even know if he got it. No card was among his possessions, I can only assume it, like so much of my correspondence, went unopened into the dumpster outside the building.
This year was meant to be better. This year, I was meant to be on the other side, waking up to the bounce of a small body across my bed so we could both go and wake Matthew with breakfast and pretend for a little while that this family was how it had always been and that she didn't miss the father she lost and we didn't hate the fathers that left or the children we would never have.
We were meant to be happy for this day.
309*Writer's Muse
Father's Day is quite possibly my least favourite holiday.
I can associate nothing good with this day this year. Around me, I watch children with their fathers, toddlers laughing and smiling as daddy tells them how wonderful his cup is, teenagers sulkily handing over gifts that bely more thought than any teenager wishes to be seen putting into a gift. Adults, appreciating what time they have, understanding how little time it could be in a way that their younger self never could have.
My last father's day with him was hollow and withdrawn. I was old enough to understand his detachment for what it was, if not for its cause. I was still young enough - I laugh at the word with a coldness I regret in myself - to believe that things would change, that there was always next year.
I sent him a card, across the ocean. His birthday hadn't warranted one, and Christmas is a non-event in Chennai, but that day I thought to try, to just remind him of the family he had left behind. angry and hurting but missing him.
He never replied. I don't even even know if he got it. No card was among his possessions, I can only assume it, like so much of my correspondence, went unopened into the dumpster outside the building.
This year was meant to be better. This year, I was meant to be on the other side, waking up to the bounce of a small body across my bed so we could both go and wake Matthew with breakfast and pretend for a little while that this family was how it had always been and that she didn't miss the father she lost and we didn't hate the fathers that left or the children we would never have.
We were meant to be happy for this day.
309*Writer's Muse