Papa, you live with a stranger you know so well

Yra Felizze Barallas

Dear Dad/Papa/Tatay/Ama,

When I was small, there were no walls between us. My universe was bound by the span of your sun-beaten arms, and my favorite place to be was perched high on your shoulders. I looked at the world from up there, completely safe because your calloused hands were wrapped tight around my ankles. There was no silence we couldn’t fill, no gap we had to cross. I knew the heavy, comforting rhythm of your footsteps on the porch, and you listened to every single word of my breathless, nonsensical stories. We were seamlessly, effortlessly whole.

Then, life happened.

Somewhere between the onset of my awkward teenage years and the quiet, tiring weight of your daily grind, a subtle space began to stretch between us. The easy chatter faded into polite, careful check-ins. It’s a bittersweet irony, isn’t it?

The man who used to know the exact frequency of my laughter now sometimes pauses, pen hovering over a form, momentarily forgetting how to spell my name. You look at me across the dinner table and see an adult whose world has changed too fast for you to keep up with. In so many ways, we’ve become like housemates sharing a roof — two strangers moving quietly in between the same hallways.

And yet, you still show up in the ways that matter most.

Because for all the little details that slip through your mind, your heart remembers everything that counts. You might not recall the exact words of my current college program or the names of the people I hang out with, but without fail, every single night when you open that front door after a long day, you come home with and hand me the exact pasalubong I’ve loved since I was seven years old. You still know exactly how much sugar makes my coffee right, and you can sense a bad day just by the tired pitch of my “hello.” You live with a stranger, Papa, but you love like your heart has memorized me so well.

You may not know me as much as you did anymore, or as much as you thought you did. You might not know every fast-moving, significant detail of my life today. But that’s okay. I know that our bond isn’t held together by the facts we keep straight, but by a quiet, unbreakable familiarity in the heart.

With all the love,

A stranger you’ve known longer than their life