A FATHER’S LOVE

I think I’m a very lucky child. Although at some point I felt like I was part of the unfortunate ones because mum left us alone with just my dad. My dad never for once even made us felt like we were bothering him. He always seemed cheerful and just happy that we are with him. He was a busy person. He even had nights when he just couldn’t be at home with us and would have to leave us in the hands of one of our favorite neighbors.

According to my maternal grandmother, she will always say my dad was a weak person and I remember how I’ll always burn deep down but I couldn’t say anything but just listen to her. For me, I saw my dad differently. He is one of the strongest people I have ever seen. My dad cared for us way better than a lot of mothers would care for their children. The interesting and beautiful part is the fact that my class mates and even teachers back in primary and secondary school never believed we were living with just my dad. We always looked clean to school and we were doing just fine academically too.

Another interesting part was that we started attending a public school right from primary school. My dad was struggling financially so we had to make a little adjustment. Let me give a back story of how we started attending a public school. So the thing is, we attended a private school at first. It was close to dad’s work place so it made a lot of things easier for him. We knew dad was busy so we always tried to avoid any reason that will require his presence in our school. But after a while, my dad faced a huge setback financially and one afternoon when we got back from school, we went to his workplace as usual to wait for him.

During his break, my dad came to us and in his usual self, he showed concern about anything that might be bothering us. We told him we were fine. We chatted more and then my dad threw a very random question but quite expected by me. He asked us if we would like to go to a public school and we all responded happily with a resounding yes. Guess what? It wasn’t even up to a week our school was changed. I didn’t even get time to say goodbye to my friends in my old school and it made me felt like I made a wrong choice when I said yes but I understood more than anyone that my dad was going through so much so I tried to stay happy and positive regardless.

And from that time till I finished secondary school, my brother and I attended public schools. It was just my sister that attended a private school at some point and later joined us in the public school. The experience at first was hard but we went through that flame and came out refined. Back then in school, we were always part of the students others were advised to look up to. Despite the fact that we didn’t have our mum to assist in our training, we did that for ourselves. We always corrected, advised and encouraged ourselves and it helped us a lot.

My dad was different and despite the difficulties he faced as a single father, he never showed it once to us. So I wondered why my grandma thought he was weak. My dad taught me how to care, be hospitable, cook, wash, clean and so much more. He was everything to us. Despite his tight schedule, he would always make time out for us to have a family dinner as much as he could and that was always beautiful.

Cheers to all amazing dads out there. My dad made me believe that a man can also do a good job as a single parent. And I think that alone has made him a really strong person.

Thanks for reading through. ❤️