To Daughter, Love Dad

I did not know that tears were running down my face as I looked into my father’s brown eyes. I yelled at him for the first time in my life.

I never thought a day like this would happen. I have always wanted to do good by him, being a total Daddy’s Girl.

I would visit him every year during the summer months. My siblings and I would play all day in the Florida sun, chasing the heat waves cascading on the black pavement on every street. I can still hear the wind tossing the grass and the laughs and screams from the neighboring children playing.

I always considered my father to be a boring man and a man of few words. Even now, as I stare into his brown eyes, no words are being said.

Every time I contacted him, I wanted to hear those words. All my life, I have yearned, even desired, to hear my father say to me, “I Love You.”

The closest I have ever managed are the birthday cards he sent me, every year on my birthday for the last 13 years. I received a personally chosen card, a card that represented who I appeared to him in that year, and on the bottom of the card, I would see his beautiful handwriting that scribbled Love, Dad.

“Love, Dad” was never enough, though. All the effort I made to make my father know that I not only cared for him but loved him with all of my heart. I was practically screaming it through every gift and gesture. Yet, I was incapable of muttering those words again when I never heard them back.

When the day finally came to visit his home, I saw my trophies placed on his bookshelf next to my siblings. The various pictures that were displayed on his mantle. The collage pillows of pictures of his children and grandchildren placed on the couch. The photo of him in his office wearing the custom tie I bought him. The remembrance of the miles he had driven to my track meets, the miles he flew to attend my graduations. The weird act of him placing a hand on my head while looking into my eyes and smiling.

It all seemed too obvious, yet I was oblivious. Sometimes a person can be so blind. I never caught on to the fact that I sometimes placed my hand on top of my father's head or realized that he did the same gesture to his father when the church was ready to close the casket.

The unspoken language, a language that I know and feel.

And now that I am inside his home, looking into his brown eyes, I place my hand on top of his head, and he places his hand on top of mine, and he looks into my shared brown eyes, and we smile because that is OUR language of love.