Member-only story
The Day My Dad Cried Was The Day I Understood Men
They tease, they work, they keep going…and then one day, they cry.
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When I was nine, my father told me about a dream that had woken him in the middle of the night. In it, I was playing near the old stone temple at the edge of our neighborhood. The sun was setting, painting everything gold. I was laughing, picking up pebbles, completely absorbed in whatever game I’d invented for myself. And then, from behind the crumbling temple wall, a lion appeared. Massive. Silent. Moving toward me with terrible purpose.
“I tried to run to you,” my father said, his voice flat as he stirred sugar into his morning tea. “But my legs wouldn’t move. I tried to shout, but no sound came out. I just stood there, watching, unable to do anything.”
He didn’t tell me how the dream ended. Just ruffled my hair and told me to finish my breakfast or I’d be late for school.
I didn’t think much of it then. Just another strange adult story that made no sense to my nine-year-old brain. But years later, that dream would come back to me. The helpless father. The approaching danger. The impossible distance between protection and peril.
