Barbie Doll House

I was 9 when I held a grudge against my father for not buying me a Barbie doll house. It was the only thing I prayed for every night for 3 years. I didn’t understand why my dad would refuse to buy me something that made me happy. Always hopeful, I would rush to the toy section and pick out the doll house every time we went to the mall. The answer was always the same, “next time, pick something else.” I would then choose something small because I noticed he never said no to those. After a year of persisting, I eventually gave up and would always pick something with a yellow sticker that had a maximum of three digits. That’s how it went until I was 13, by that time I had moved on from the Barbie house.

Now I wanted Hannah Montana stickers, pink lip gloss and was super infatuated with Alex Pettyfer. I would imagine scenarios where Miley was my best friend and Alex would like me back because my pink lip gloss made me super pretty. I would snap at dad when he tried to knock on my door while I was watching “Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging” and get livid when he took my laptop away because I had finals.

At 16 I had a major fall out with dad. He wanted me to study science and pursue medicine; I wanted to study management. We didn’t speak for weeks, and I couldn’t bear seeing him scrunch his forehead every time we saw each other. It almost seemed like he was disappointed with me, which made me angrier each time. I would sit by myself and think about all the things my dad might be thinking about me, and it all led to one conclusion, “he must think I am up to no good. “As years went by, we started warming up to each other and by the time I was 20, my dad had become my best friend. A far cry from Miley, “The Hannah Montana,” but someone I looked up to in my 20s, just as I had looked up to Hannah Montana in my teens.

Today is July 1, 2019, and I am packing my bags to leave for Australia. As I was clearing my toys from the forgotten cupboard in my room, I came across my Barbie collection. I pulled one, then another, until I counted 17 of them. Yes, 17 Barbies my dad bought me each time we went to the mall, and he said to pick something else but the Barbie house. Quickly, one thought led to another, and I immediately sat down to write this because I am afraid, I will forget this overwhelming realisation of a reality I couldn’t fully grasp back then. Once, I was a child who didn’t know any better, and once, I was a teen yet to be shaken by the realities of life.

I was 7 when I came home crying to my dad, asking him why we didn’t have our own house. The daughter of our landlord would always remind me that the house we were living in was theirs. My dad would always reassure me that one day we will have our own place and I would have my own room.

I was 8 when we moved to our unfinished two- story house and my dad offered to host a little party for me and my friends at our new house. I told him no and sulked in my room. I was embarrassed that the stairs didn’t have railings, the walls weren’t painted, the floors had unevenly cut plastic mats, and my room wasn’t pink.

Every few months I would see my dad emptying his wallet to pay people who came to install railings on our stairs, paint our walls and install wooden parquet. By the time I was 10, I was proud to invite my friends over to my house and show them my room: my pink room with a built-in wardrobe, a small study table, and a flower lamp my dad got me from China market. This was the room he built by saving every penny he could as a student and the sole breadwinner of our family.

My dad couldn’t buy me a Barbie doll house because he was building one for me: my own Barbie house that I could live in, a space I could have privacy to watch “Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging” while I dreamt of dating Alex Pettyfer. It was a space I would be proud to call my own. He wasn’t thinking I was a disappointment at 16; he was just a father processing the grief of a child rebelling against the ideal life he had planned for them. He took his time, but he always met me where I wanted to be, and that’s the love of a father.