Sometimes, I wonder how my father could have been if the world had treated him differently — before the world told him how a man should be, and if the world had been gentler to him. Would he appear to be different to the man he is now?

He is not my father, as I know him now — I know him as the man who carried responsibilities with no hesitation, and whose love often arrived in practical forms and unspoken sacrifices. I mean, my father, before all of that — was a little boy who once dreamt big enough to reach a whole new sky, a little boy who had scraped knees from playing all day with trembling, pinkish dry lips — a little boy who must have cried at some point in his life, who must have wanted to be held in the same way he held onto heartstrings, who must have needed someone to tell him that it was all right to be afraid.

I wonder when that boy disappeared.

Perhaps it happened the first time he was told, "boys don’t cry,” perhaps it happened when tears earned ridicule instead of comfort, when softness became something shameful, when being called sensitive sounded more like an insult than a description. Perhaps it happened gradually, in a hundred ordinary moments, until he learned that to become a man meant abandoning the tender parts of himself.

Because that is what we have long taught our men, isn’t it?

That men are unyielding, that men are providers before they are people. That men are protectors who never ask to be protected. That men should carry burdens with quiet dignity and wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. That men swallow grief, conceal fear, and endure loneliness in silence because vulnerability has been mistaken for weakness and stoicism for strength.

And so, little boys grow into fathers who know how to sacrifice but not always how to say, "I am hurting."

In another life, I would have raised my father differently.

If I could have raised him, I would raise him in a home where tears are not met with shame and then I would sit beside him on the days he feels too much and tell him that emotions do not make him less of a man; they make him human. Then slowly, I would teach him that strength is not measured by how long he can endure suffering in silence but by how bravely he can face his own heart.

I wish I could tell him that he does not always have to be the strongest person in the room; that he is allowed to rest, that he is allowed to grieve, that there is no dishonor in saying, "I need help."

At first, it all came to me in a thought of frustration. Because realizing that he was once like me, a dreamer who wants to aim beyond — made me think it was the anger that made me imagine raising my father.

I am angry. I am angry at the way silence lived between us like an elephant in the room. I am angry at how love could exist so steadily, yet struggle to express it in his words. I am angry at how he seemed so far away even when he was right there — present in body, but incredibly unreachable in feeling.

Because perhaps my father did not become this way on his own, perhaps there were hands before mine that taught him how to swallow his tears, and those voices called for tender weakness and stoic strength. Perhaps, he, too, was once a little boy who reached for comfort and reached for comfort and found expectations instead. Perhaps someone taught him that to become a man was to become a fortress: to work, to give, and history repeats itself billions of years ago.

And I started to understand that some men are not simply formed — they are instructed, and the instructions often given along before they became fathers. Somewhere in his childhood, there must have been rules he did not write but quickly learned to survive by. And slowly, these rules transform to a traditional, formatted identity known to man.

If I could have raised my father, I would love to unlearn all those rules with him. Not all at once, not loudly, but at our own gentle pace — like it is similar to teaching someone that it is safe to breathe again after hiding their breath for too long.

If I could have raised my father, I would have told him that crying does not make less of anything. That there is nothing shameful in the way a human body tries to release what it can no longer carry.

If I could have raised my father, I would have sat beside him in the quiet moments and not try to fix him and stay for what time lasts, so he would know that stillness does not always mean abandonment.

If I could have raised my father, I would have taught him that love is not only something you prove through exhaustion. That being a father is not only about enduring — it is also about speaking, about reaching, about allowing oneself to be seen even when it feels unfamiliar.

If I could have raised my father, I would raise him to believe that love is not merely putting food on the table or paying the bills on time, that Love is also saying, "I missed you,” that it is apologizing when you are wrong, that it is speaking affection aloud, even awkwardly, and that it is letting your children see that fathers, too, have fears and fractures and bad days.

If I could have raised my father, I would raise him to understand that gentleness is not a weakness — that tenderness does not strip a man of his masculinity and there is courage in softness and dignity in vulnerability.

Perhaps then, he would not mistake silence for strength, that he would not carry every burden alone, that he would know that he deserves comfort, too. Maybe it is about mourning the little boy inside him — the one who was taught too early that becoming a man required becoming less and less of a human and intended to work more like a robot. The one who learned how to provide before he learned how to process pain, and the one who was expected to be a pillar for everyone else, even when he himself needed something to lean on.

I cannot return to my father’s childhood. I cannot place my hand over every wound that made him believe he had to earn his manhood through silence and sacrifice. But if I could, I think I would hold that little boy's face in my hands and tell him this: You do not have to become hard to become a man. You do not have to bury your tears to deserve respect. You do not have to suffer alone to be strong. You are allowed to feel deeply, to love openly, to break, to heal, and to be held. And perhaps, if someone had told him that long ago, I would not spend Father’s Day wondering what kind of father he could have been. I would simply have known him as a man who never had to trade his humanity for his masculinity.

But maybe this has never truly been about raising my father.

And maybe, if I had known how to do that, he would have known how to say the things he never says now. It is not because he does not feel them, but because no one ever showed him that feelings were meant to be spoken at all.

The truth is, the older I get, the more I realize that I am not only looking at my father when I think this way. I am also looking at myself.

Because I carry pieces of him in ways I do not always notice — how I hold things in too long, how I learn to function through what I cannot name, how I sometimes mistake silence for strength because that is what was modeled to me. And I wonder if that is true for him too, if he once looked at his own parents and felt the same quiet confusion I feel now.

There is something almost devastating in that realization: that none of us begin where we end up, that my father was once someone's child, that my father, too, had to learn how to love someone who was never fully taught how to receive love.

And suddenly, the question is no longer just about raising my father. It becomes about all the things that were never gently taught in the first place.

So when I say, if I wish I had raised my father, I am no longer speaking from a place of frustration. I am speaking from a quieter place now. A place that understands that some people are not capable of feeling, and that they are simply carrying emotions they were never allowed to explore.

And in that understanding, what remains is not anger. It is something softer. It is not like grief. It is love.

I wish I had raised my father — not because I do not love the man he became now, but because I have learned to love him as he is, even in the silence he keeps and in the softness he was never taught to show. Maybe I will never fully understand all the ways he learned to carry his life without speaking of its weight, but I understood enough to stay.

And that is what love is, it is choosing to see someone clearly like an open book and still not letting go. On this day, I realize there is beauty in perfection not in who he could have been, but in the way he remains my father anyway. And I love him for that, in all the quiet, complicated ways that do not always need words.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy! Thank you for loving me in all the quiet ways you know how.

The Frontman