Supermen

One fine boring day at the office, when my friends and I were mindlessly talking about mindless things, a slightly older, married colleague came to join our conversation, with a question on his mind. “Why do some women worship their fathers so much?”

Fathers. This is the first man who would ever matter to us. This is the first man who would be solely responsible for the way we would value the rest of the male species for the rest of our lives. I can only speak from my point of view, and of my own Father. My Father and I have a relationship that is not like the one in movies, where it is all idealistic. There are things we disagree about. Sometimes we argue, sometimes we have a good time, but now when I try to recall all of those many, many arguments (most of which happened when I was a teenager, of course), they all seem hilarious to me.

My Father is not one who is vocal about his affection. He doesn’t send us cheesy text messages, he doesn’t make touchy speeches about his love, but he showed it through the subtle things that he does, which I have only now realized as I had gotten older. He never missed a recital, a stage performance, or a prize giving ceremony. Sometimes he forgets our birthdays, but he remembers the littlest details about us, like the position we liked to sleep in when we were babies, and our friends in primary school. These days, everytime I came back home to visit my parents, my Father would wash my car and check the engine. When he comes around my house he would fix things and mop the floor. We were a normal middle-class family, but growing up, my Father never made us feel inadequate. Although we lived in a small town not even recognizable in Google map, he never taught me to be a woman with a compressed mind.

It’s becoming more clear to me too that whatever you’ve become, you owe some of the credits to your Father. My Father used to take us for roadtrips to the most boring of places, but when I recall them today, all I remember is the sheer excitement of a kid being taken to see things, even if it’s just another town in the same state. Because of that, traveling has now become one of the essential keys to my happiness as an adult. My Father has also never exemplified that money is a make or break for a good life, and to that I am thankful – these days I am the least fazed by it.

Of course, I am by no means trying to worship my Father. He is after all, just a human. He has his flaws and imperfections, and although when I was little it seemed that he had the ability to shield me from everything, now, as a grown up, I saw that my Father is just like me, too, only older. There are some things in this world he can no longer save me from, and there are some problems in this life he can no longer fix for me. But that does not make him any less heroic to my eyes. Great fathers make the best of men.