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Last year, I had important news to share with him. “Look, Daddy, this is my ring. I’m getting married in just a few months,” I projected as I flicked my wrist back and forth to show him my diamond.
“Wow, congratulations, honey,” he exclaimed as drool began to seep down his chin.
I quickly grabbed one of the many washcloths, the same ones he used to clean me with during bath time, now withered and tattered, just like he was. Through his rosy cheeks and rotting smile, a genuine sweetness radiated.
“Do you want me to read you a story?” I asked.
“OK,” he beamed.
Going into my childhood bedroom, still filled with my picture books and stuffed animals, but now also lined with his folded laundry, diapers and medicinal lotions. Grabbing “Goodnight Moon” off the shelf, I thought of how he used to always read it to me.
Now living in London, I come home at least three times a year to see my dad. Sitting for 10.5 hours to fly across the world, I always remind myself that I don’t want any regrets.
As I opened the first page, I looked at him, and the same twinge of bitterness ran through me. A feeling that I always carried. This isn’t fair. Two of my best friends had married just months before, and their fathers walked them down the aisle. That was never in the cards for me.
“OK, here we go,” I said as I opened the first page.
“In the great green room,
There was a telephone,
And a red balloon…
“Goodnight stars, goodnight air…”
The lines hung between us, small and delicate, stretching across the decades that separated my father and me. I brushed a kiss over his bald head, feeling the weight of years that we never had together and the fullness of all the ways he had shown up anyway. In the quiet of that moment, I understood how much love can compress a lifetime, even when time itself is limited.
“Goodnight noises everywhere, Dad.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost in April 2026.
