Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Is Love Enough?

When a daughter falls in love, I believe it is always toughest on the father. On one side you are glad to see her happy and yet there is a pain in your heart as you realize you will no longer be, 'the man in her life.' Little girls grow up to be women and women fall in love and get married, we fathers know this and eventually learn to accept it.

My darling Parsing, the apple of my eye, that little girl who could diagram a sentence before she could tie her shoes, is now in love. I tried to prepare myself for this as I watched the suitors come and go. However, there is no amount of preparation possible for me to accept the man my little girl loves. What can I say, Integer is a nice enough fellow, yet how can I put this discreetly, he is a mathematician.

How will I ever live down this shame, this embarrassment to our family? Our proud heritage of prose and subtext will now be reduced to a mere line of numbers and equations. These two children talk of marriage and ceremony as if the merging of our two cultures were a simple task. Just last night I had a nightmare about my Parsing walking down the aisle in her beautiful wedding gown and carrying a bouquet of prime numbers. I awoke with a start my bed linen soaked with the sweat of a worried father.

I am merely the father of the bride; I know I have no choice and that I have to accept this fait accompli or risk losing my Parsing forever. I try not to envision my grandchildren drawing equations on the sidewalk in chalk as if 2+2 even made sense. In the end, I will not fight this mixed marriage; I will support my daughter's choice. When these children learn that this relationship is nothing more than an 'unequal equation,' I will be there for her. For what else can a father do?

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