Illustration: LE DUY
I used to think that in this world, there is no feeling as gentle and as painful as the love between a father and his daughter. It is not noisy, nor colorful. It is a silent feeling, as strong as a veined hand, which throughout its entire life only knows how to silently support, so that its daughter can grow up in peace.
They say, having a son means having another man in the house. Having a daughter means having another soft heart. And a father, no matter how strong and resilient, when faced with the sparkling eyes of his little daughter, becomes clumsy.
From the day he signed the birth certificate with trembling hands, the man knew for the first time that his life was now tied to a small creature. From that day on, the man shouldered the responsibility of supporting a life, unconditionally.
Today, I witnessed the scene of the man next door holding his daughter’s hand as they walked down the aisle. The father’s hair was more than half gray, his eyes sparkling with emotion. His hand held his daughter’s hand – the small hand that had clung to him in the early years of her life. Now, that hand was placed in the hand of another man, to walk together through the long years to come.
He is no longer the first person the child calls when he stumbles, no longer the only person who can lull the child to sleep with a quiet sigh. No matter how strong a father is, the moment he sees his daughter in a wedding dress is the moment he feels weakest. It is the moment he realizes that his daughter is no longer his own.
People often compare marrying off a daughter to spilled water. But to a father, where can that water be spilled? A daughter is still flesh and blood, a shadow, a gentle breath of a lifetime. It's just that a father's love sometimes has to take a step back, so that his daughter can move on to her own happiness.
And no matter how many twists and turns life has, in my eyes, you are still a little girl, with pigtails, chattering around me every time I come home from school. Every father only has one "little princess" and that is a love that can never, never be replaced by anyone. Maybe I can't carry you for the rest of your life, but I have been by your side throughout your first years of life, with all my unconditional love. And that is enough for you to carry with you, to the end of happiness.
My father - a dry man but the person who was closest to me throughout my childhood and witnessed every step of my growth. Never saying a word of love but that father learned how to braid his daughter's hair with his clumsy, rough hands.
The day the province was divided, my father rode his bike all over Dong Hoi just to find a doll that looked like the one I had left behind in Hue . It was also the seemingly dry father who silently stood outside the classroom door on the first opening day, just to make sure that his daughter was not afraid when she left his arms.
There were nights when I had a fever, my mother was busy making medicine, and my father sat next to me, not knowing what to do other than put his hand on my forehead, gently coaxing: "It's okay, I'm here". From that moment on, my daughter - me - was always confident in every turn of life because I always believed that no matter how much the storms knocked me down, my father would always be there to protect me at all costs.
When I was 15, I told my father that I had passed the entrance exam to a high school in the city. My father was happy, but his eyes were also filled with sadness. My father was silent during the meal. That night, he sat quietly on the porch for a long time. Cigarettes burned red one after another. Many worries appeared on his wrinkled face. My mother told me that during the years I was studying away from home, he couldn't sleep for many nights, restless with all kinds of worries.
Then I grew up, and that worry grew in my father's eyes. One time, waking up from surgery, between unconsciousness and awakening, seeing my father standing by the hospital bed, I burst into tears like a child. I cried because the wound on my left chest kept aching, because the side effects of the anesthesia made me dizzy and I cried because I missed my father.
Nearly 40 years old, while my friends were out there having fun, “heads in the sky, feet on the ground”, I was lying here, surrounded by wires, sick and weak. Nearly 40 years old, mature and strong enough to embrace all worries, I was lying here, letting that silver head cry with worry. That was also the first time I saw my father cry. Tears fell down his wrinkled face.
My friend - a daughter who had just lost her father - suddenly burst into tears one day when she read a poem that seemed to cut into her heart: "I go dreaming in the sky / Leaving my father to dig the land for a lifetime without finishing". She said, for all the years of her youth, she was absorbed in pursuing her own dreams in the lavish city. A city shining with yellow lights. A dream of her life flying far away like a kite filled with wind. Just like that, she went. Full of excitement. Full of aspirations. Full of trains that never looked back.
You think life is about moving forward, forgetting that back home, your father is alone in a lonely house, wandering around the old garden all his life. He never asked you to repay him for anything, but quietly nurtured his childhood dreams.
Once you were moved to tears: "If only... I had asked my father if he had any dreams." In your memory, he never mentioned dreams. He only talked about crops, sunny fields, flooded fields. Things that seemed small and trivial but were the whole hard work of a lifetime. My father had no great dreams. His dream was simple and heartbreaking: A peaceful life for his little daughter. And then, when you realized that, he was gone forever.
It turns out that the greatest things in life are supported by the quietest loves. Like a father's love, as quiet as the ground, firmly supporting every step of his child, throughout his entire life.
Dieu Huong
Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/nguoi-dung-sau-196198.htm
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