16th June 2013, an ordinary day like another and yet holding a special relevance to me. Most would know that it is the Father’s Day today, but apart from this, it also happens to be my father’s birthday. Come to think of it, most of the times it is hard for me recall my own birthday...and yet there are some days which are significantly imprinted in my mind, papa’s birthday being one of them. It obviously happened many years before I was born and logically speaking since I was not there to witness the event, it shouldn’t be as important to me. And despite this, somehow 16th of June seems to hold an unusual place in my heart, same as my does my mother’s birthday and their anniversary.
The only plausible reason I can gauge for this is that I owe my being to these dates. It is only coz of my parent’s birth and their subsequent marriage that I live and breathe; and that I think would be the cause of my fascination with these days. This year the coinciding of 16th with father’s day makes it all the more momentous to me.
Father’s Day as per Wikipedia is ‘a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society’ and ‘was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.’ Although if you ask me, I really don’t feel that there was any need to dedicate a specific day to honour fathers, or even mothers (not because it is not worth it, for of course it is). No day can really denote and represent in totality what the parents are for a child and what the child is to them; and nor can showering love on your parents for one single day of the year make up for all those other days when you might have neglected them. And regardless of this moral preaching, I am not in the least immune to the trend.
Moving on from dates and days, lemme now speak on the man whose presence makes them worth speaking about. All of us without a doubt love our parents a lot (not speaking of some less fortunate ones) and I’m no exception. When I think back to my childhood, the first memory of papa which comes to me is him carrying me around, while I stood on his feet and the next would be him and mummy singing lullaby’s together for my brother and I. There are many others which flash before my eyes in a jiffy, overwhelming me with all sorts of emotions entangled together. These are moments when I’ve loved him to death and also simultaneously, instances when I’ve hated him with the same intensity. Loved- that is understandable after all I’m talking about my dad; I am bound to love him obviously. But it is not just this social binding which makes me love him; it has more to do with the sort of a person he is, kind-hearted, generous, intelligent, caring and the list goes on. (I won’t dwell deeper on it, as coming from me this might sound more of a self-praise than anything else.) Hatred- now this is not something about which I should be proud of, and I clearly am not. Harboring such negative emotion towards him, even for a second has been a mistake, a grave one at that. Albeit on second thoughts, each child during his/her growing period must have gone through these phases of revolts and rebellions, all without a cause; and each of them must have regretted it in the same manner as I.
Dad has definitely always been the best father I could have ever dreamt of...I on the other hand have never quite been the daughter he would perhaps have wanted. And despite all my imperfections, temper, laziness, lethargy he does not love me any less. Sometimes I even feel he loves me a little more than my brother, a fact which is denied fervently no doubt, but (sorry Addy), the denial does not make it any less true.
They say that a father is his son’s first hero, and daughter’s first love. All I would like to say is that for me, dad is not simply my first love but also very well fits the bill of being my first hero (perhaps the last one too).
There would be many more father’s day and many more birthdays, but for this once, I want to make him a promise, a promise to fulfill all the dreams he has seen for me, all the aspirations he has catered since the day I was first placed in his arms, a promise to achieve what many would deem unachievable. And though I’ve been told many a times by dad himself that I shouldn’t aim at attaining something just because he wants me to, I don’t think any accomplishment of mine would be devoid of a desire to first please him……after all at the end of the day I would always be Daddy’s little girl.
Father’s Day as per Wikipedia is ‘a celebration honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society’ and ‘was inaugurated in the United States in the early 20th century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting.’ Although if you ask me, I really don’t feel that there was any need to dedicate a specific day to honour fathers, or even mothers (not because it is not worth it, for of course it is). No day can really denote and represent in totality what the parents are for a child and what the child is to them; and nor can showering love on your parents for one single day of the year make up for all those other days when you might have neglected them. And regardless of this moral preaching, I am not in the least immune to the trend.
Moving on from dates and days, lemme now speak on the man whose presence makes them worth speaking about. All of us without a doubt love our parents a lot (not speaking of some less fortunate ones) and I’m no exception. When I think back to my childhood, the first memory of papa which comes to me is him carrying me around, while I stood on his feet and the next would be him and mummy singing lullaby’s together for my brother and I. There are many others which flash before my eyes in a jiffy, overwhelming me with all sorts of emotions entangled together. These are moments when I’ve loved him to death and also simultaneously, instances when I’ve hated him with the same intensity. Loved- that is understandable after all I’m talking about my dad; I am bound to love him obviously. But it is not just this social binding which makes me love him; it has more to do with the sort of a person he is, kind-hearted, generous, intelligent, caring and the list goes on. (I won’t dwell deeper on it, as coming from me this might sound more of a self-praise than anything else.) Hatred- now this is not something about which I should be proud of, and I clearly am not. Harboring such negative emotion towards him, even for a second has been a mistake, a grave one at that. Albeit on second thoughts, each child during his/her growing period must have gone through these phases of revolts and rebellions, all without a cause; and each of them must have regretted it in the same manner as I.
Dad has definitely always been the best father I could have ever dreamt of...I on the other hand have never quite been the daughter he would perhaps have wanted. And despite all my imperfections, temper, laziness, lethargy he does not love me any less. Sometimes I even feel he loves me a little more than my brother, a fact which is denied fervently no doubt, but (sorry Addy), the denial does not make it any less true.
They say that a father is his son’s first hero, and daughter’s first love. All I would like to say is that for me, dad is not simply my first love but also very well fits the bill of being my first hero (perhaps the last one too).
There would be many more father’s day and many more birthdays, but for this once, I want to make him a promise, a promise to fulfill all the dreams he has seen for me, all the aspirations he has catered since the day I was first placed in his arms, a promise to achieve what many would deem unachievable. And though I’ve been told many a times by dad himself that I shouldn’t aim at attaining something just because he wants me to, I don’t think any accomplishment of mine would be devoid of a desire to first please him……after all at the end of the day I would always be Daddy’s little girl.
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