It wasn’t fair for her. She came to this world and found it already
fixed; the boundaries between countries drawn, the number of hours constituting
a day, what is good and what is bad, the atrocities of human kind, the abhorrent
ways of society. Like pigs in shallow mud, we wallow in the trivial choices life
throws at us.
I look at her and wonder what goes through that adolescent mind
of hers. She, whom I thought is a branch sprouting from my being, my blood, my
face, my skin. I know nothing of the fears she carries, the stories of pain no
doubt I helped create.
What do we know of our children? Only the basics; when they
were born, their first word, their shoe size. I couldn’t tell you what her
favorite book is, or what she hates most about school, what she hopes or
dreams. All I know is what she tells me; a small translucent window through
which I am sometimes allowed a glance.
She didn’t come here to live my story, or carry my beliefs, she
didn’t even come here to be my daughter. She came here for her own reasons, to
tell her own story in which I play a little, and sometimes shameful part.
‘I love you’ I say, ‘I love you too’ she says, and we embrace,
and for a swift moment, we share a small sense of calm before the whirling
madness of existence resumes.
