Happy Father's Day

You were never an ideal dad like they portray in TV commercials and celebrity dads who are flawless, like dream fathers.

You were not the one who caught us when falling, but you let us fall, so that we could learn on our own to walk again without falling. You didn't lead by letting us hold your finger but you always were in the background to hold us if we run into trouble. You made sure we didn't make the same mistakes as yours.

You let us fight our battles on our own. In fact, you let us figure out what our battles were and how to fight them. You helped us define our independence and taught us respect and dignity; you taught us right from wrong. You made sure we always chose the right. Until the world reminded you that we are daughters and we should know our righteous place as homemakers and family women. The ones to always make sacrifices. You now expect us to forget it all. Forget to fight for ourselves, forget to stand for what's right, forget that we have have a self-esteem too which is not above but equal to our husbands. You are now not open to accept things you may learn from us.

You won't shy away from slapping me if you have to; making me do things I don't want but are good for me. But you still can't see me cry, it hurts you to see me in pain.

You may not be a flawlessly perfect father but we see you as our support system and will always look up to you for values of life. We'll always think of you before making any major or even the puniest decision. Our every action and reaction has us assess your opinion about it before and after.

You are not someone for whom we were the world but we saw you as our whole wide world. Had you cared more about us and less about what others thought, our lives would have been different. Only if you were gutsy enough to fight the world for us, I bet we would have conquered it for you. You never treated us like princesses and made sure that we were always hooked to the ground, close to reality. You never made a safety cocoon for us, you let us see the real ugly world, you let us see it bare so we never had any illusions or fantasies. 

Yes, you don't go by the romantic definition of a father but you made us who we are, you made us real, you made us US.