dad, I love you

I never had a very close relationship with my dad.  Not that it was bad, necessarily, just not close.  I never talked to him about anything that mattered, let alone about anything intimate.  I never shared my secrets or concerns with him.  Why?

I guess I was just intimidated by him.  He was never around when I was growing up.  He was abroad working most of my childhood, and when I was in Indonesia, I was in the dorms, so obviously, we weren't together.  He seemed almost scary to me, even though I (of course) knew that he was working hard for our family.  I've seen the sacrifice that both my mom & dad have made for us kids...  It wasn't just that they were apart.  That time apart with us kids, it really took a toll on the relationship itself.  I rarely "felt" his love - Asians are bad at expressing love anyway, and with all the distance and once or twice a month phone calls, I was definitely not a daddy's girl.

Anyway.  So when I had Alaise and my parents came to live with us for a couple of months, I thought he would be the same.  See from a safe distance but not touch.

How so very WRONG I was.  He was the most hands-on grandpa I could have asked for.  From when she was a tiny little thing, he held her so much during the day, he always buckled her in her car seat, even always sat next to her when we had to place the car seat in the back seat of the van.  Cramped as he was, he always wanted to sit next to her and take care of her.  He is the master of putting my kids to sleep in his arms, and loves napping with them in the crook of his arms. He made sure that we had a burp cloth & a paci on hand at all times.  He would pat her little bottom gently, coaxing her to sleep when she was fussy.

What a wondrous experience it was.  To watch him defy all of my expectations.  Then I realized, that he was probably that way with me too, when I was little.  When I was just a babe, he probably held me just the same and showered love on me.  Or maybe he couldn't, because he was always working, or always away.  So maybe he was doing all the things he wanted to do with me, now with my daughter.  I can't tell you how much closer I felt to him as I watched him care for my daughter.  It was almost as if I was soaking it all in, pretending that I was watching my own babyhood.  He was loving both me and my daughter through it all.

I remember of something my mom said to me once.  We took a family portrait a long time ago, when I was... maybe a sophomore in high school.  It was really the first formal portrait that we got done that I remember.  We all got a small print of it, and I framed mine, and my brother put his in his wallet (which he still carries around).  Mom & dad had a slightly larger print of it framed.  Mom told me once that dad carried that photo around no matter what and where.  With them moving around so much, it's hard to have too much "stuff".  Well, that photo went anywhere they went, and always got hung in their bedroom.  Spending more time with him now, I see how attached he is to photos.  He loves taking pictures of family, even on a mundane day, he'll take out his camera and take photos.  He saves every photo I upload on Facebook onto his laptop.

So for Christmas this year, I got him a digital photo frame.  Since they can't carry around too many prints of pictures (they get really bulky!), I thought it would be wonderful for them to be able to have a digital frame with photos circulating.  I think he really liked it!  Him and my brother got it working right away and he had photos displaying all day long even before they left.

Just because you can't express your love doesn't mean you don't.  I think that's the case here.  I think my dad loves us much, much more than he can say.