His father didn’t miss a single game. Not one. Through middle school and high school and two years of college ball before the injury ended it.
He was always there. Front row when he could get it. Always with a coffee. Always left before the other parents finished talking.
His son realized in his thirties that his father had never once asked him how a game felt. Win or loss. Good performance or bad. He showed up and then he left. The space in between was never filled with words.
Presence and attentiveness are not the same form of love, though we often mistake one for the other. Showing up is something. It is not nothing. But there are people who show up to every important moment of our lives and never once ask what those moments mean to us. And we spend years afterward trying to figure out why we still felt alone despite all the attendance.
My father was present. I won’t say more than that because this isn’t my story to collapse into. But I know the feeling of being watched without being seen. Of performing for someone who applauded without ever asking what was going on behind it.
His father came to every game. Left before the conversations started.
What do we do with love that shows up but never quite reaches us?
A lot of us were raised by people who showed love through action. Who fixed things and provided things and showed up to things. Who were taught that presence was enough, because nobody ever taught them about the other part.
It’s hard to be angry at that. It’s also hard not to grieve it.
He has kids of his own now. He goes to every game. And every time, on the drive home, he asks them one question: how did that feel?
That’s the whole inheritance. One question his father never asked.
Some things worth sitting with:
- Is there someone in your life who shows up but never quite asks how things feel for you?
- Have you told them what you needed, or assumed they should have known?
- What kind of presence do you offer to the people you love?
There’s a related thread worth following: Her Mother Said She Was Proud. It Was the First Time She Could Remember..
Inspired by a real story shared anonymously online.