Letter From A Father Who Learned To Grow Up With His Daughter

She was born yesterday and today, in a few hours, she will be entering university. Yesterday, I was told that I was going to be a father; shortly thereafter she was crawling on all fours and a few minutes ago she took her first driving school lesson. Yesterday, she looked at us as if we were gods and, today, like someone who looks at people of which she knows all the faults, in depth. Only one night has passed, a night that I spent thinking, amazed, seeing her grow up …

Growing up at times, because I also had to go out to work. At other times, her siblings needed me, and so did mine, as well as my friends, my parents, her mom, and even me. I sometimes needed myself. I got home late, or else I didn’t know a tale to tell. And that’s how she left the age of made-up stories to begin to experience an infinitely more cruel reality, even though she is just as enchanting.

To invent her own stories, avoiding our overprotection and our mania to apply the proverb “out of sight, out of heart” with every step she took and every risk she took.

The hopes of a father

Yesterday I had placed a lot of hope in her. Hopes that were mine and about which she had said nothing. Or, at least, nothing but showing me the bottle when she was thirsty or stuffing whatever she found in her mouth when she was hungry. Today, my hopes continue to be mine, but in reality, she ended up building hers and I had to accept them. It’s a process that took me all night.

I would have liked her to be a lawyer. Because I have the impression that they have a quiet life, that they occupy an important position and that, through their training, they acquire a sense of justice superior to that of the majority of mortals. However, she wanted to become a journalist.

But not like those who present the news on TV. Rather like those who travel, who reveal wars and give a voice to these great stories which are also anonymous. It scares me, so much so that sometimes it is impossible for me to sleep. While she looks at me with the air of having fallen in love with someone without even knowing them, with the heart. As a father, that look, his look, fills me with pride.

Give up control

As a father, it was also not easy to cede control to him. I have always seen her smaller than she was, more vulnerable, easily influenced and innocent. I also saw how, very often, she headed for the precipice with all the determination in the world and I had to let her do it, because even though I would have liked to be her best teacher, there are lessons that only life can teach you or you need to learn from other people.

She’s so pretty, so pretty when she’s lying down. I don’t know if she knows, but there isn’t a prettiest girl in the world. I would often tell her and she would smile at me, then she would blush and finally she would answer me with a “Daddy!” (don’t embarrass me).

I have a lot of trouble understanding this battle she started to wage against her body and pulling from my memory those moments when I too gave a lot of importance to what the boys and girls thought of my life. age. Understand that to understand it, very often, you have to delve into its memory, because in this exercise I also encountered nostalgia and my eyes were fogged up.

The discomfort that could cause me this horrible jacket to go to school, a jacket sewn by hand by my mother who was bored and sting like the devil. I don’t know which jacket I had to make him wear, maybe I even made him wear several. Maybe it was those conservatory classes that I forced her to attend, until her disinterest in music broke my will to see her turn into a friend of eighth notes and sixteenth notes. I did not succeed in making her like, she scratched herself in front of me and I consoled myself by telling myself that it was good for her.

As much as I wish I had been his best teacher, there are lessons that only life can teach you, or you need to learn from other people.

I realized …

Now, if I had to start over, I don’t think I would make you do so many right things. I wish I had seen the way you looked at the ball when you were little and played football with you. To have been less attentive to dangers and paid more attention to joys. Not being late so often. Accepting to play with you before you give up and go see other little girls to do it.

I wish I had assumed earlier that you were perfectly able to dress warmly when you were cold or eat when you were hungry. Because these were the needs you had at the very beginning, but not later. Subsequently, you needed courage for all the projects you started, answers to all the doubts so specific to your age, the company of someone who is not bossy but who gives support, consoles and motivates . Maybe it was my role, maybe it was the role of a father.

They say that emotions are magic… and that human beings can feel several at the same time. I feel sad because some of the time we spent together will not return. I guess all parents feel this at some point, but it doesn’t console me.

However, there is one thing that does: Now, when I see you fighting your own battles, I’m proud that you face them honestly. That you decide which ones you want to lead, that you make your mistakes and that you find your passions. Seeing you grow up, I understood that I wished you an easy life, and that you also wanted an easy life. I just hope you get there and of course you share it all with me.

PS: As you can see, today too, apart from being a father, I started to be a bit of a journalist and I would like to finish this article and then sign it with you when we eat together.

Images of Soosh