The Scrunchie
“Oh, Father's Day is on Sunday, and I don't know what to do for Daddy.”
Her voice carries the weight of urgent planning in the darkness of her bedroom.
“He asked me for a scrunchie, and I want to crochet one for him, but I don't know if I'll have the time because I don't know how to start it."
It’s Thursday evening as I sit on the edge of her bed, listening to her work through the logistics of love.
How she'll need to ask her friend to teach her. How the friend is fast at crocheting but she'll need more than two days. How she wants it to be perfect for him, wavy, with a design, customized in colors he loves, special just like he is.
Her eleven-year-old urgency fills the dark room—the kind that makes Father's Day feel like the most important deadline in the world.
I used to feel like that for my dad too. Until I was eleven.
We didn't have Father’s Day in India when I was growing up. But I remember the feeling she carries now—that pure devotion, the certainty that he deserved everything good I could give him.
I was Daddy’s little princess. His one and only. The salt lassis with mint he made on hot summer days. His patient help with math homework. The way he always got me fuschia-colored sweaters, pants and accessories from his travels.
I loved him with all of my heart.
Then, in sixth grade, everything changed—with one conversation. I told him what his father had done to me—the nightly abuse, the visits to my room, the grandfather everyone revered.
"Oh, he must have been joking," my dad said.
In that moment, I learned that protection had limits. That family honor mattered more than my truth.
That the father I thought I had—the one who showed up at every award ceremony, who wrote careful notes on the back of my childhood photos—could’t let go of his reverence for his father, even as he shattered my world.
The feeling my daughter carries now, that urgent love that makes her stress about scrunchies—it died a sudden, painful, silent death.
Now I watch her plan, and my heart fills with love, joy, and despair all at once.
Love for her earnestness, the way she wants the gift to be exactly right.
Joy because I know her father will treasure whatever she makes, will wear that scrunchie all weekend long just because she made it.
Despair because I remember what it felt like to care that much, to love that deeply, to revere that honestly and I can't access that feeling anymore.
My husband—"the softie" in our house—grants her whispered wishes. An Apple Watch when she mentioned all her friends had one. A hoverboard just because. He even learned to make mousse with her last month.
He plays Uno with her on weekday evenings putting his phone on Do Not Disturb, and lets her win at Monopoly.
They watch magic shows together, not to be amazed by them but to analyze them. Their favorite pastime activity is watching math riddles on YouTube.
He offers her quintessential dad jokes, she responds with classic pre-teen sass.
She is his world in a way that doesn’t require her to earn it or question it. She knows he’s got her back.
I want her to keep this feeling. Not reverence—I’ve learned the difference between worship and trust—but this comfortable certainty that her father is dependable, that he will protect her, that her love for him is safe to feel.
Father’s Day is here and I don’t know how to celebrate it. Not for my own father, who I love in a complicated, fractured way. Who taught me that parents are simply people—flawed, frightened, fumbling through life like the rest of us. Who still calls from India, his voice shaky as he recovers from blood clots, trying to be strong so I won’t worry.
I can’t crochet him a scrunchie with my daughter’s pure urgency. I can't feel what she feels. But I can choose to let her keep what I lost.
I can sit on the edge of her bed and listen to her plan. I can help her find time and video resources to learn to crochet. I can watch her stress about making it perfect, knowing that with her father, it already is perfect—because he sees her effort as the gift.
This is what I witness: a daughter who can love without hesitation, a father who proves daily that her trust is well-placed. Their bond is different from what I knew—stronger, safer, built on presence, nurtured by love.
Maybe that's its own kind of Father’s Day gift—seeing the cycle break, watching this relationship flourish exactly as it should.
