The Dad I'm Still Learning to Understand

BY NEHA MOGHE ROY | CHATTERCHIRPS

There is a memory that lives very clearly in my head.

It is 4 AM. The house is quiet in that specific way that early mornings are — the kind of quiet that feels like the world hasn't started yet and only your family exists. My brother and I are at our study table with our textbooks open, blinking ourselves awake. My mother is in the kitchen, already making something warm.

And my father? He is setting up our school bags.

Not because we asked. Checking that our uniforms were ironed. Polishing our shoes till they had a shine we'd take credit for at school. He did this until the day he decided we were old enough to learn — and then he sat with us and taught us how to arrange our bags as per the school timetable ourselves, subject by subject, day by day, until it became habit. He didn't do things for us forever. He did them until we were ready to do them ourselves, and then he made sure we knew how.

I was a child then. I thought that was just… how mornings worked.

It took me almost three decades to understand that someone's hands were behind every single one of those mornings.

The Father I Grew Up With

My father is many things. But if I had to pick the first image that surfaces when I close my eyes and think of him — it is not a festival, not a milestone, not a big dramatic moment. It is him crouching down in the corner of our living room, checking the soil of one of his plants.

We had plants everywhere. Every corner of the house, the terrace, the little ledges — roses in different varieties, vegetables that he grew from seed and watched all the way to fruiting. As a child, I didn't quite get it. Why does Papa love these plants so much? They don't give fruit, they don't give flowers, what is even the point. That is genuinely what I thought.

Then I grew up, got my own home, and googled "best air-purifying plants for home." I went through the list. I stopped. I scrolled back up. Every single plant on that list — every one — had been in our house. I had grown up with them without knowing what they were. I had known their names, known how to care for them, known what they needed and when, without ever being formally taught. Just from watching him.

That is a particular kind of gift that you only recognise long after it's been given.

We also never bought plants the way some people do — pick up something pretty from a nursery and hope for the best. We grew them from seed. We watched them come up. We waited for them. That patience, that particular satisfaction of watching something living grow from almost nothing — I got that from him too. And I am grateful for it every single time I watch something green push through soil in my own home.

He also took me for badminton practice. After a long day at his office. Dropped me off, picked me up, didn't complain, didn't make me feel like I owed him anything for it. That was just what was happening on that particular evening.

But I won't pretend my childhood with my father was all softness and ease. He was strict — the kind of strict I genuinely haven't seen millennial dads be with their children (I say this with love, and also a little bit of teasing, because somehow the burden of discipline has quietly shifted to us mothers — and we are managing, thank you). My father had this way of making me feel like a class was about to be taken at any moment — on what I had studied, on what I had eaten, on what I had done with my afternoon. That particular fear? It was real. It was constant. And I did not enjoy it.

But here is what I understand now that I did not understand then.

That discipline was not strictness for the sake of strictness. It was a man who came from a background where not much was handed to you, working very hard to make sure his children took nothing for granted. He was not strict because he wanted to frighten us. He was strict because he believed we were capable of more — and he wasn't going to let us slide out of that quietly.

We also never missed a festival without new clothes. Not once. Not in any year, regardless of what the finances looked like behind the scenes. And our child eyes completely failed to notice something — that he was not buying for himself. Every festival, he'd say he had enough shirts he hadn't even worn yet, he'd find one of those. We didn't question it. We just wore our new clothes and celebrated. It is only now, as an adult, that I understand what was actually happening in that sentence.

I only know this now because some of it slips out in stories, years later, when we are adults sitting around a table. He never told us. Not once.

As a child, I thought my father was strict and disciplined. Now I understand he was also quietly carrying things we may never fully know.

What He Gave Me Without Knowing

My parents had this ritual I only understood the value of much later. Every evening after they came home from the office, they would sit together for about half an hour — tea, and everything from the workday. They talked it all out. Whatever needed to be said, whatever was heavy, whatever had gone wrong or right — it came out in that window. And after that half hour, work simply did not exist at home. It was family time, fully. No half-attention, no office conversations bleeding into dinner. That boundary was clean and it was held every single day.

I grew up thinking that was just how evenings went. Now I understand that it was a very deliberate, very healthy choice — and I can see myself reaching for the same thing in my own life. Keep the work in its place. Be present when you're home. Those things don't happen by accident.

And then there are the plants.

I already mentioned the revelation of googling air-purifying plants and finding my entire childhood in the search results. But what I didn't say is that I also got his love for them. Not just the knowledge — the actual love. The pleasure of watching something grow. The satisfaction of growing from seed rather than buying something ready-made and hoping it survives. The care that goes into it. That is fully his, and it is fully mine now too. That particular inheritance makes me happy every single day.

I also shop a lot for my daughter. Way too much, probably. Every time I see something she might love — a book, a little thing, something that would make her face do that particular thing — I get it. My parents laugh when they see this. Because apparently that is also him.

The things we carry from our fathers are not always the things we expect.

The Father I Watch Now

My husband and my daughter have something.

I cannot fully describe it except to say that she does not sort her needs by parent. She does not come to me for some things and to him for others. She comes to whoever is closest, and trusts completely that both of us can handle whatever she brings. When she needs to be held, she reaches for him as freely as she reaches for me. When something is broken and needs fixing, when she is hungry and cannot wait, when she wants to be thrown in the air and caught — she doesn't check which parent is which. She just goes.

That kind of trust does not come from a child who has been let down.

I watch him after long days at work — the kind of days where everything he wants is probably to sit quietly for ten minutes. And he walks in, sees her face, and something shifts. He doesn't bring the heaviness of the day in with him. He smiles and plays and is fully there, like he just woke up fresh. Like the day didn't happen. I know it happened. But she doesn't, and I think that is intentional.

She reaches for him for hugs and cuddles — and watching her do that takes me right back to being small and reaching for my own father. That particular kind of grab, that particular confidence that the hug will be there when you need it — it looked exactly the same. Thirty years apart and it looked exactly the same.

My father was very strict. My husband is not — or not in the same way. But what is the same is this: the steadiness. The reliability. The way a daughter grows up knowing that this person is hers.

That is not a small inheritance.

What Children Miss About Dads

I think we miss a lot, actually.

We see the playfulness. We see the silliness. We see the piggyback rides and the cricket games in the living room and the broken lights from hitting the ball too hard (yes, that was me, yes my father encouraged me anyway). We see the arms that throw us up in the air — so high, always a little higher than last time — and that particular ticklish feeling in your stomach as you go up, that split second of pure thrill, and then you come back down and you are caught, every single time, without question. I used to ask to go higher. I was never afraid, not even slightly. Why would I be? I knew he would catch me — and that was simply that.

We do not see the worry they carry alone. We do not see the financial strain that gets quietly managed so that we have new clothes for every festival, every time. We do not see the tiredness behind the smile when they come home and immediately become the fun parent. We do not see what they gave up or silently adjusted so that everything could feel normal for us.

Dads tend not to talk about this. My father certainly didn't. My husband certainly doesn't. They just show up — again and again — and let the showing up speak for itself.

I think that is the most quietly radical thing about fatherhood.

The Spills and the Thrills

When I was writing How Dads Show Up — Even with Spills & Thrills, the part that felt most real to me wasn't the big dramatic moments. It was the small, fumbling, earnest ones.

Dads who go into the kitchen without quite knowing what they're doing and still come back with something. Dads who don't always know which side of the blanket their child prefers, but tuck them in anyway. Dads who attempt the bedtime story even though they don't know the favourite one and end up inventing something entirely new. Dads who try to braid their daughter's hair and produce something that no hairstylist would ever claim — but the daughter loves it, precisely because it's imperfect, precisely because he made it.

That is what the spills are.

Not disasters. Not failures. Just love that doesn't quite know what it's doing but shows up anyway, every single time.

My father did this. My husband does this. I imagine most fathers in the world are doing versions of this right now — quietly, imperfectly, earnestly — and their children, like I once was, may not yet understand what they are watching.

One day they will.

What I Want to Say

To my father — I don't say this enough. I don't say it at all, probably, because we are not that family and you are not that man and thank yous tend to feel too small for what they need to carry. But I am grateful. For the 4 AM mornings. For the polished shoes. For the badminton practice runs, and the swimming classes too — showing up after a long day, waiting, bringing me home. For the festival clothes every single year no matter what. For the plants in every corner of the house — for making home feel alive, and for quietly giving me the love and knowledge to do the same in my own. For making us feel like everything was enough even when it wasn't easy. For believing in our decisions without doubting them. For carrying things we never knew you were carrying.

To my husband — you are doing a great job. I don't say it often enough and I know that. But watching you be her father makes me feel something I don't have a single word for — gratitude and relief and love all at once, because she is growing up with someone who shows up for her completely. She is lucky to have you. So am I.

And to my daughter — one day you will understand your father the way I now understand mine. One day something will slip out in a story, or you'll be sitting at your own table with your own children, and you will see it. Everything he did. Everything he quietly carried. Everything he made look easy so that your childhood could feel light.

I hope you tell him then. I hope you tell him before then, too.

How Dads Show Up — Even with Spills & Thrills is a picture book for ages 3–7 about the everyday, imperfect, beautiful ways fathers love their children. From the award-winning author of NO! STOP! TELL! — Winner of the Golden Wizard Book Prize 2025.

Neha Moghe Roy is an award-winning children's book author and founder of ChatterChirps — a children's book brand for ages 0–8 built around emotional learning, early STEM, body safety, and stories that stay with children long after the last page.