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"Dad, where's your dad?"

The question was inevitable. But this time you knew the answer. At least part of it. The part about him being in the black & white picture hanging in our study. Today (27/5/17) you brought it up early on, on a saturday morning while we were just having a little lie-in time. We somehow stumbled on the topic of who's Dad was where and you asked "Dad, where's your dad?" more because you were ready with your answer. Unlike other times, I took a moment to get my act together and take it forward. For this was one of those rarest of rare mornings when I had woken up fully aware that he was in my dream last night.

Dear Daughter,
Dreams and memories have a strange way of leaving a mark, a flavour, an aftertaste of sorts. I barely remember the dream from last night with my dad in it but I do remember he was in it. Maybe it wasn't his face, maybe not his voice (I have zero recollection of his voice) but definitely his presence that has left a definite melancholic kind of stamp on my day.
Its not a happy mark because I don't think my interaction with him or his character in my dream was a positive one. Once again, memories play a conceited-deceitful game of their own. I say once again because throughout my life I have been grappling in phases about my Dad's character, confused between other people's memories of him.
Everyone tells me how great, warm, large hearted he was. In the angst of my teens I thought how could that be true? For as far as I know he had a role to play in his demise and that of our until then normal life. Even if his role was to selfishly indulge in a pleasure of his choice. My memories of him were too few, faint and far between to show me any way out of the maze.

You will soon be four- the age forever etched in my mind when I lost him. I am already many years older than my dad ever got to be. Now, I know, despite my instincts that he, like every other person would have had good and bad in him - memories and confused dreams be damned.
Undeniably, not unlike a dream, both his once-short-lived presence and his long-lived-absence has had a mark of their own on my life, our lives. So that dear daughter is the full answer to your question- My dad is in my life choices, my character and me. He is there when I rise and he will be there in my fall. Just like everyone else's dad.
P. S.
You just came back from your ballet class and looking at me writing this letter, to future you. How cool is that 😉?

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