My dad wasn’t expected to be able to make there on time. He had just ended another long night shift, the kind that doesn’t end when the clock says it should. The store was a shambles. There were broken tools, a customer emergency, and hours of hard, dirty work that wouldn’t come off no matter how many times he scrubbed his hands.
He came straight from work, with boots on, dirt on his clothes, and the biggest smile.
While I was waiting in line in my cap and gown, looking for individuals I recognized, I saw him. His clothes were smeared with soot, and he was still wearing his heavy work boots. He had just taken off his welding helmet, so his hair was flat. His shoulders were heavy after working all night, and his eyes were red from being tired, but his smile made everything better. He looked at me like I had just given him the keys to the world.
After the ceremony was complete, he surged through the crowd to get to me. He hugged me so tightly that I could feel the dirt on his clothes pushing against my dress. Someone close to me took a picture of me with my graduation in one hand and a dirty handprint on the white cloth. I smiled for the picture, but my stomach was twisting inside.
I saw his handprint on my frock and the smile of pride on his face.
I got an email that morning, just a few hours before I went on stage. I hadn’t said anything to him about it. I had been accepted to medical school. I had been secretly working toward this goal because I was afraid it would make him feel like I was leaving him behind. My dad gave everything he had to raise me. I could stand there because of all the late nights, additional shifts, and pain in his body. I didn’t want him to think I was leaving the world he had constructed for us.
We were both scared to open the mail.
That night, we sat at the kitchen table with our plates of food in front of us. My dad looked at me with the same compassionate eyes he usually had when I was having problems finding the appropriate words. I gave him the envelope.
“Are you not going to open it?” He inquired.
I couldn’t speak. “Can you help me get it open?”
He carefully tore it up, as if the paper alone were worth something. As he read the first line, he could feel a smile coming on.
He said, “You’re in.” “School of Medicine”
In two words, medical school altered everything.
I got ready to be let down, expecting any sign that he wanted me to stay closer to home. He leaned back instead, and the pride on his face smoothed out the deep lines.
“I always knew,” he said. “The shop was never going to be the last place you went.” You were supposed to accomplish more than this.
I told them I was worried—scared of failing, scared of the debt, and scared of not fitting in in a society that was so different from where we came from.
He nodded slowly. “That’s good.” Fear means you care. And caring means you’ll put forth the effort to get it right. Child, you’re burning up. You don’t get fatigued. “You burn through.”
I studied like someone who believed in me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about those words. They helped me get through long nights in the library, anatomy labs that made me doubt myself, and tests that made me fatigued. I remember the soot on his hands that day, the pride in his eyes, and the fact that he always believed in me, even when I didn’t.
He then went to campus a couple times. He would arrive to class and the hospital wearing perfectly clean boots and a pressed shirt, walking about like he was on a tour of a cathedral. He didn’t say much, but the pride in his eyes spoke a lot.
He walked along the hallways like a chapel.
He had already left the shop by the time I got to my last year. He smiled and added, “You don’t need me to be there anymore.” “Now is your time.”
I saw him in the front row when I graduated from medical school. The suit he was wearing was new to me. It wasn’t old, greasy, or dirty. It was just a smile that was so bright it seemed to light up the whole room.
No soot, no exhaustion, just pride on the first row.
I walked across the platform with the diploma in my hands when they called my name. It had both of our names on it. The letters were mine, but the journey—the sacrifices, the hard work, and the faith—was ours.
We had done it. All together.
The diploma bears my name on it, but he holds it tightly.
