I have hundreds of poems and vignettes like the one I am sharing today. My writing flows from my identity which is firmly rooted in one fact: I am my father’s daughter. Everything begins at that singular reality and ripples outward into knowledge and discovery and independence and achievement. Not long ago I told my brother, “To be his child is to have the privilege and burden of his unique history. Learn to not only carry it with dignity but wield it for a powerful character.”
I am the daughter of a penniless orphan who raised four younger siblings and fought every single barrier between him and his true calling, which was only to create. Quite simply, he set out to tell stories and became one of those rare people who can sustain themselves and their families through their art. He is my enduring inspiration. “How did you fight the naysayers,” I ask him. He tells me time and again that he didn’t. I have seen him embrace his biggest critics.
“There is courage in humility.”
“The work is our worship.”
“You, my daughter, I raised you to be a dreamer but also an achiever. You make your own decisions and tell me what they are, and I will honor them,” he said with his hand on his heart when I asked him at 18 if I could just leave. I wanted to move to the US for higher education. He raised me to have sound judgment, to trust it, and act on it.
Everything I am, and I am light and dark like all people (as is he), comes from him. My father is the first of all things for me:
my first kingdom, my first wilderness
my first cognizance, my first ignorance
my first poem, my first teacher
my original nest, my only real home
Happy Father’s Day.
