The Father's Day Gift
I was born just days before Father’s Day, and maybe in some poetic way, I was supposed to be a gift for him. As his only daughter, I was close to him, but not in the way people expect when they think of a father-daughter bond. Ours was a connection made up of tension, the kind that binds just as much as it bruises. Our relationship was a constant struggle—both of us stubborn, unyielding, and headstrong, mirrors of each other’s rough edges. I wonder, in those moments he called me kurang ajar, biadap, tak dengar kata —did he realize just how much of those traits I’d learned from him? Or did he see my defiance as something foreign, something he had to criticize in me, even though he was the one who shaped it? When he called me stubborn, it was like he was naming a piece of himself that I’d inherited. I’d seen him be keras kepala my whole life, watched him stand his ground, refusing to bend or compromise. He wore his hard-headedness with pride, yet when it showed up in me, he seemed to
