I always kind of despised my dad, and for a long time, I didn’t feel guilty about it. Mom ran off with a younger guy when I was little, erased us like a bad memory. No calls. No birthdays. Just gone.
It was just me and him in a tiny apartment that always smelled faintly of detergent and cheap coffee. Dad worked nonstop—double shifts, overtime whenever he could. Still, we barely scraped by. My clothes came from clearance racks. Other kids had new sneakers, new phones, new everything. I tried not to care—but I did.
One afternoon, a friend showed off a brand-new iPad. That night, I exploded at Dad. “Look at other dads,” I shouted. “They can actually provide. You’re just a failure.”
He didn’t yell. He just looked at me, eyes glistening, nodded once, and went into his room.
A week later, my phone rang in class. Dad had suffered a heart attack. At the hospital, his boss approached me, pale and shaken.
“You didn’t know?” he asked. He explained that Dad had been saving every spare dollar for years—skipping lunches, wearing worn shoes—building a college fund for me. He talked about me constantly, about my grades, my dreams.
Suddenly, I saw everything clearly. His sacrifices. His love.
I had called him a failure. I collapsed into a chair and sobbed like a child.
