I saw a little boy, who couldn't have been more than six [if he was that old], walking with his father. The child looked up and said, "I love you, Daddy."
But did his father hug him the way a normal father would?
No.
He shook his finger in the boy's face and said in a tough, hard, completely unfatherly voice, "MEN don't say I love you to other MEN!"
I felt so bad... so sorry... for both of them. And I remember thinking, "I hope I never marry a man like that."
Now for the earlier incident.. which is a good memory. I was only a little girl, not even eight years old but I've never forgotten.
I was sitting on a bench on Ocean Parkway with my Baba and her sister, my Aunt Lily. On the bench across from ours sat a little boy and his father. They were looking at a picture book.
And then the father said, "Let's go home now and fix dinner and surprise Mommy when she gets home from her club meeting."
I hope that boy grew up to be like his father.
