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| The face of my motivation—a reminder that the quiet work of fatherhood is the most rewarding job I will ever have. |
Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at my laptop, trying to write. My son appeared beside me, holding a wooden block in each hand.
"Papa," he said. "Kijk. Dit is een toren." (Look. This is a tower.)I glanced quickly. "Mooi, beta." (Beautiful, son.) Then I turned back to the screen.
He did not leave. He stood there, waiting. I could feel him waiting. The weight of his small presence, patient and unmoving.
I looked up again. Really looked this time.
He had built something. Not much—just two blocks stacked on top of two blocks. But the way he held it, the way he looked at me, told me this was not just a tower. This was an offering. A moment he wanted to share.
"Papa," he said again, softer now. "Wil je kijken?" (Do you want to look?)
I closed the laptop.
When I Became a Father
When my wife told me she was pregnant, we were living in Portugal. I remember standing on our small balcony, looking at buildings I did not grow up in, surrounded by a language I did not yet speak, and feeling terrified.
I thought: I do not know how to be a father in this world. I barely know how to be a man in this world.
My father raised me in a village with no electricity, no mobile phone, no television, no radio. When I was sick as a child, he carried me on his back for three or four hours to reach the nearest health post. I remember his shoulders, thin but strong, moving beneath me as he walked through the dark. I remember the sound of his breathing, steady and determined, never complaining, never stopping.
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| Where my journey began. My father walked these paths for hours to provide for us, long before I ever dreamed of a life in Belgium. |
He had no books on parenting. No internet to search for answers. No experts to consult. He just did what needed to be done, quietly, every day, without expecting thanks or recognition.
Now I am a father in Belgium, with central heating and a smartphone and a school that sends daily updates about my son's progress. And still, I feel like I do not know what I am doing.
The Pressure
There is a weight to being an immigrant father that I did not expect.
I want my son to have everything I did not have. Good schools. Warm clothes. Healthy food. Opportunities. But sometimes I wonder: in giving him everything, am I taking something away?
These are not things I would wish on him. They were hard. They were painful. But they shaped me. They taught me what love looks like when there is nothing to give except yourself. I think about what Denmark taught me about balance and the things we leave behind.
He has never been carried through the dark for three hours because there was no other way. He has never known what it feels like to be so sick that your father's back is the only comfort, the only transport, the only hope. He has never sat on the floor with no light except the moon, listening to stories because there was nothing else to do.
These are not things I would wish on him. They were hard. They were painful. But they shaped me. They taught me what love looks like when there is nothing to give except yourself.
Here, love looks different. It looks like saying no to screen time. Like putting the phone away during dinner. Like closing the laptop when a small boy brings you a tower made of blocks.
It looks smaller. Quieter. Easier to miss.
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| A writer’s struggle: Learning that sometimes the most important sentence is the one I don't write because I chose to listen to my son instead. |
The Turning Point
Last month, my son was sick. Nothing serious—just a fever, the kind children get. But enough to keep him home from school, enough to make him clingy and tired and small.
I sat beside his bed, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth, the way my mother used to do for me. He looked at me with those dark eyes, so like my own, so like my father's.
"Papa," he whispered. "Blijf je bij mij?" (Will you stay with me?)
And in that moment, I understood something I had never fully understood before.
My father, carrying me through the dark for three hours, was not just transporting a sick child. He was saying, without words: I will carry you as far as I need to. I will not stop. I will not put you down.
I cannot carry my son through the dark for three hours. There are hospitals here, doctors here, medicine here. But I can stay. I can sit beside his bed and wipe his forehead. I can close my laptop when he brings me a tower. I can put my phone away and actually look at him when he speaks.
This is my carrying. This is my walking through the dark.
My Father, Now
He is 75 years old now. Still in the same village where I was born. Still in the same house, the one he built with his own hands, the one with no electricity for most of my childhood.
Every day, I call him. The connection is never perfect—sometimes the voice cracks, sometimes the video freezes, sometimes we just sit in silence waiting for the signal to return. But we call.
"Kasto cha, buba?" (How are you, father?)
"Thikai chu, babu." (I am fine, son.)
We talk about small things. The weather. Who got married in the village. Whether the buffalo is healthy. He asks about my son, about Belgium, about whether we have enough warm clothes for the winter. I ask about his health, about whether he is eating properly, about whether he needs anything.
And every time, before we hang up, he says the same thing: "Aafno khyal rakha, babu. Hamro chinta nagara." (Take care of yourself, son. Do not worry about us.)
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| Staying connected across oceans. These daily calls are my way of carrying my father now, just as he once carried me. |
But I do worry. I worry because I have seen photographs from last month, and he looks smaller than he did a year ago. His shoulders, the same shoulders that carried me through the dark, seem thinner now. His walk, once steady and sure, now needs a stick.
I have noticed something strange. The older he gets, the more he reminds me of my son.
The way he repeats questions because he forgot he already asked. The way his voice softens when he talks about small pleasures—a good meal, a sunny day, a phone call from his grandson. The way he sometimes sounds like a child asking for reassurance—not like the strong man who carried me through the dark.
When people grow old, they become like children again.
I wrote that once, and I meant it. But I did not fully understand it until recently.
My father, who never asked for anything, now asks: "When will you visit?"
My father, who never showed fear, now says: "The world feels big and I am small in it."
My father, who carried me, now needs to be carried.
And I am here, in Belgium, too far to carry him.
What I Am Learning
Fatherhood, I am discovering, is not about big moments.
It is not about the advice you give or the lessons you teach or the rules you set. It is about the small, invisible things. The things no one notices except the person receiving them.
My father never told me he loved me. Not once. Not in so many words. But he showed me every single day. In the way he walked through the dark without stopping. In the way he gave me the last piece of bread without saying anything. In the way he sat with me when I was sick, not reading a book or checking a phone, just being there.
I am trying to do the same for my son.
I do not always succeed. Sometimes I am impatient. Sometimes I look at my phone when I should look at him. Sometimes I think about work when I should think about his tower made of blocks.
But I am learning.
Every time I close the laptop, I am learning.
Every time I put the phone away, I am learning. It is these small habits that transform a life.
Every time I say "kijk, beta, ik ben hier" (Look, son, I am here) — I am learning.
This World, That World
Sometimes I think about all the people in the world who still live like my childhood. No electricity. No mobile phones. No internet. No idea that a man in Belgium is writing these words about his father in a village without paved roads.
One world. One human family. But it feels like different planets.
My son will never know that world. He will never know what it feels like to walk through the dark for three hours on his father's back. He will never know the silence of a night so deep you can hear your own heartbeat.
But he will know this: his father closes the laptop when he brings a tower. His father puts the phone away at dinner. His father calls his own father every day, even when the connection is bad, even when there is nothing new to say.
He will learn what love looks like by watching. Just like I did.
I live in a world of high-speed internet, cobblestone streets, and structured systems. It is a life many would call a 'gain,' but every gain has its cost. I often reflect on the true meaning of Brain Drain vs. Brain Gain and the global battle for minds like mine, caught between two homes.
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| The beautiful, quiet streets of Belgium—a world away from my childhood, yet the lessons of love remain exactly the same. |
Closing Scene
Tonight, after dinner, my son asked me to tell him a story.
I turned off the lights in his room. Just the nightlight remained, the one shaped like a cloud. He curled under his dinosaur blanket, eyes wide, waiting.
I told him about a boy who lived in a village with no electricity. A boy who got sick one night, and whose father carried him through the dark for three hours to reach a doctor. A boy who grew up, crossed oceans, learned new languages, and became a father himself in a country he could not have imagined as a child.
"Was that you, Papa?" he asked.
"Some of it," I said. "And some of it was your grandfather."
He thought about this for a moment. Then he reached up and touched my face.
"Papa," he said. "Ik ben blij dat jij mijn papa bent." (I am glad that you are my papa.)
I did not say anything. I could not. I just held his small hand and kissed his forehead and sat there in the dark, listening to his breathing slow, feeling the weight of everything my father gave me and everything I am trying to give in return.
Fatherhood is quiet work. No one claps. No one notices. No one knows except the small person watching you, learning from you, becoming because of you.
My father knew this. Now I know it too.
And maybe, one day, my son will know it.
That is the only payment that exists. That is the only reward.
Tomorrow, I will call my father again. The connection will crackle. He will ask about the weather. I will ask about his health. We will say the same things we always say.
And when we hang up, I will sit for a moment in the silence, grateful for his voice, grateful for his shoulders, grateful for the dark he walked through so I could walk into the light.
Then my son will appear with another tower made of blocks.
And I will close whatever I am doing.
And I will look.
A Note to Readers
If you feel comfortable, I would love to hear from you.
Have you ever noticed the quiet work of fatherhood—or parenthood—in your life?
Is there a small moment, a small gesture, that someone has done for you that stayed with you forever?
Or a small moment you’ve done for someone else, even if no one noticed?
Share your experience in the comments. Your story might remind someone else that the quiet, unseen acts of love are the most meaningful of all.
Stay present, stay grateful, and keep finding joy in the little things. Until next time, may your days be full of gentle moments.
-With love, Bitty
If you enjoyed this personal reflection, you might also like my recent How Cleaning One Drawer Healed My Stress.
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