This Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day everyone.  Those of you lucky enough to still have your dad around, I hope you take the time to celebrate him and tell him what he means to you! I miss my Abba (Bengali word for “dad”).  This September he will be gone for two years.  He died the day after my birthday.  I remember holding his face as he struggled to take his last breaths and asking him to spend my birthday with me.  He couldn’t respond back but he granted that one last request.  I have lots of memories of my Abba.  We’ve not always had an easy relationship, but it was worth getting to know him better as an adult. He lost his right arm in a horrible industrial accident and had to teach himself how to do everything again. There was no physical or occupational therapy back then in Bangladesh.  I remember watching Abba tie a double windsor knot on his tie with only one hand.  He taught himself to write with his left hand, drive a stick shift when the gears where on the opposite side of him and tie his shoe laces.  He was a brilliant man in mind and body.  I remember thinking that there was nothing he could not do.  In the middle of civil war he managed to keep us safe and he taught me that every battle waged and won begins in the mind.

I married a most exceptional man, who is a lot like my Abba in many ways and a great Dad.  I cherish the life I have with him and the time I had with my Abba.  I am making it a point of letting all the men in my life who are Fathers know that they do an awesome job and cannot be replaced.

I made these for Father’s day. My piping skills need work but I figure it’s the thought that counts!

My dad and I, six years ago dancing to Louie Armstrong’s “What a wonderful World”