The Distance He Thought Was Protection

The Distance He Thought Was Protection

By [Abdul Hadi]

My father was always there.

He drove me to school every day.

Fixed everything that broke.

Came to every football game—even if he stood at the far fence and never cheered.

He was present.

But never close.

I used to imagine he had a wall around him—thick, invisible, and always there. I’d try to climb it when I was younger, blurting out stories from school or handing him crayon drawings like keys. He’d smile politely, say “That’s nice,” and return to whatever he was fixing or building or muting.

Eventually, I stopped climbing.

Eventually, the silence between us didn’t feel unusual.

It just felt... normal.

He wasn’t cruel.

He wasn’t drunk or absent or violent.

He paid bills, kissed Mom on the forehead, mowed the lawn with precision.

He just never let me in.

When I cried after my first breakup at 15, he stood in the doorway of my room and said:

“You’ll be fine. You’ll get over it.”

Then walked away.

It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t shame.

It was the same flat practicality he applied to fixing a leaky pipe.

He thought it was enough.

I used to think maybe he didn’t feel things the way I did.

That he was built different—stone, not skin.

But that wasn’t true.

One night, when I was seventeen, I heard muffled sobs coming from the garage.

I peeked through the cracked door.

He was hunched over his workbench, holding something in his hands.

It was a baby shoe.

Mine.

I didn’t say anything. Just backed away.

But from that night on, I stopped believing he didn’t feel.

He just didn’t know how to let it out.

And he thought that keeping it all in protected me.

We didn’t talk about my college applications.

He just handed me a check.

We didn’t talk the day I moved out.

He just nodded at my car.

We didn’t talk when Mom got sick.

We just sat in the waiting room, side by side, in total silence.

His version of love was presence without intimacy.

It wasn’t until I became a father myself that I understood what terrified him.

He was afraid of being seen.

Of exposing his feelings and failing to control them.

So instead, he controlled the silence.

But silence doesn’t protect. It isolates.

And I promised myself: I would not pass that on.

My son is five.

He asks 300 questions a day.

He hugs without warning.

He cries when I leave the room for more than five minutes.

I answer every question I can.

I hug him back—longer than he expects.

And when he cries, I kneel down and say,

“I’m not going far. I’m always coming back.”

One weekend, my father came to visit.

We were in the backyard, watching my son draw chalk stars on the patio.

Out of nowhere, Dad said,

“He’s soft.”

I tensed.

That old, heavy silence returned.

But I breathed in and said,

“No. He’s open. There’s a difference.”

He didn’t respond.

But for the first time in my life, he didn’t walk away either.

Later that night, after my son went to sleep, I found Dad sitting at the kitchen table, cup of tea untouched.

He looked at me and said, quietly,

“I was scared I’d mess it up if I got too close.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I wanted to yell. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to cry.

But instead, I said,

“I know.”

And somehow, that was enough.

Now, every time I see my son reach for me, every time he says “I love you” out loud, unprompted—I think about that wall my father built around himself.

And how I am choosing not to build it.

My father gave me presence.

But I am giving my son presence and proximity.

Because love isn’t just being there.

It’s letting yourself be known.