Home is wherever I'm with you
This article hit close to my heart, especially as I am graduating this summer too. Though the family situation is rather different, it is ultimately our responsibility to care for the parents and I know my dad has given up so much for us and he is one of the greatest man I know.
He had never been vocal about grades, like the writer's dad, but it is always implicit - you must always take pride in what you do - or do not do it altogether. I remember at one point where I got Cs for my report card (for Maths and Science obviously), he saw the card, made a paper plane out of it and made me watch the plane glide from our eighth storey window. With that, he said "thats where bad grades go - nowhere." I stayed in my room for weeks, crying over something which is irreversible at that point, and strive to work hard to be where I am today. At one point my sports took over my studies, which he said that Rugby can wait - you have to focus on other things in life.
At 18, he left his parents for work - travelling to different parts of the world and living in (of all places) - Finland. Maybe he was curious, maybe it was the passion for music, for culture - and he had vowed never to get married.
"Why would I want to make another human being suffer in this cruel world."
Though he eventually did, evidently, and had always said, "theres nothing great about this world- you are only here for a short while, it is not what you do - but how you do it and how it affects other people. Things do not get harder when you grow up, you just have more responsibilities." Despite being away from his family for so long, he had bought a house for his parents to live in and gave them an allowance every month. Though my grandparents slept in different rooms (that is another story), my grandma had always been fond of him - though not necessarily his choices in life.
As the only girl in the family, I had always been daddy's girl - he would take me shopping on Saturdays (buying me clothes that my mom deemed too revealing - the irony), drive me to school or uni, pick me up from parties, the airport, dinner dates. Sometimes I'd stay up to watch football with him, staying put the whole 90-minutes just to talk to him during his busy weekday schedule. At one point, mom questioned our relationship, but it was just that - I loved spending time with him and my brothers just playing fifa or watching football during the weekdays or Saturday mornings. Being the only girl in the household is great - there are no drama, no boy-talk, no soppy teen dramas on TV, no competition. It was this honesty that i liked - which had never sit well with female friends and I always have to watch what i say around them.
However, things were not always smooth sailing with my dad while growing up. It had always been tough love in the beginning. My dad was still overseas while I was growing up, he would get things from Amsterdam (not what you think it is) and send postcards and I only had this image of him. He was the "unknown", someone whom I feared. When I was 5 he bought this green table and chair so I could sit everyday and do my homework while he reads his papers every afternoon. As a kid, every racist remark I made in passing was a serious offence to him - the worst being on a flight to London when I made a joke about a black guy to my brother and he heard it. My dad, always disciplining with logic and reason - a thing which i detested as a kid, but over the years grown to accept.
I know his health is deteriorating, body could no longer hold the pressures of everyday work life. I know he does not expect much of his little girl, but I will always be there for him as he was for me.