A Wakeup Call.................

Listen daughter: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and your hair curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I was reading my paper in the room, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, Dear: I had been cross to you, I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with the towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes properly. I gave you that wide eyes look when you tend to be mischievous before guests. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found faults, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbow on the table. You made noises while chewing your bites. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved your hand and called, " Good bye daddy!" and I frowned, and that was my reply, " Hold your shoulders back!"
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing with your friends. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you right before your friends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive- and if you had to buy them you would be more careful. Imagine that, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the room, how you came in timidity, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God has set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, my princess, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding faults, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a girl. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardsticks of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This has shown by spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me goodnight. Nothing else matters tonight, my angel. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you in the waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual, "She is nothing but a girl, my little girl! I am afraid I have visualized you as a woman. Yet as I see you now, sweety, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much!!!! 
# AfrinFatima
# Inspired by a paper#