My Father Introduced Me as His “Little Clerk” — Until His Former Navy Brother-in-Arms Looked Closer and Realized Who I Really Was
For most of my life, my father introduced me in a way that made me feel like I was standing at the edge of my own story rather than the center of it.“This is my little clerk,” he’d say with an easy chuckle, as if it were a harmless nickname.
As if the years I’d spent in silence, discipline, and service could be condensed into a single, small, convenient label. As if I had never become more than the girl he remembered sorting mail during her high school internship at the base where he once served.
And for years, I let him say it.I told myself it was easier.Easier for him, easier for me, easier than explaining the truth — a truth he never asked for and I never offered.But the universe has…CONTINUE READING…
For most of my life, my father introduced me in a way that made me feel like I was standing at the edge of my own story rather than the center of it.“This is my little clerk,” he’d say with an easy chuckle, as if it were a harmless nickname.
As if the years I’d spent in silence, discipline, and service could be condensed into a single, small, convenient label. As if I had never become more than the girl he remembered sorting mail during her high school internship at the base where he once served.
And for years, I let him say it.I told myself it was easier.Easier for him, easier for me, easier than explaining the truth — a truth he never asked for and I never offered.But the universe has…CONTINUE READING…
