To My Father.

One morning, I watched a father and daughter. They entered the train car hand in hand.

"Daddy, my Dora bag is heavy!"
"Well, there's really nothing in there."
"But I have all my books...and stuff!"
"Do you want me to help you?"
"No..! I can do it!"

The daughter twirled herself around her father's arm and continued to speak to him, telling him of what she wanted to read when she got to school, telling him of this friend and that teacher. A minute later,

"Can you please help me?"
"What do you need help with?"
"My bag. It's soooooo heavy."

She slumped her shoulders. He held out his open hand and she shrugged off her bag. It was in fact, very light. You could hear a book (I imagined it to be a Bearstein book) and a paper folder sliding against one another.

Whenever I see father-daughter interactions, I miss my own.

I miss when he would put me on his shoulders or piggyback me because I told him my legs hurt, when really, all I wanted was to be held up higher so I could see above the heads of other adults. I remember the times when my mom would work early mornings so he would have to get my siblings and me ready for school. He would sit me down and comb my thick, unruly lion-like hair and pull it into a ponytail. I told him once that I wanted my hair braided. He thought for a second and told me he would do something better; he put my hair into two pigtails by the base of my head. Everybody liked it at school and I was really proud of my father.

Now, I am too big for him to carry. I am too old to sit in front of him and have my hair combed and split into pigtails. But I will always be proud of my father.