Reflections and Perceptions

Reflections and Perceptions BY Joshua Otieno Angasa I hope our daughters will love me as much as you guys love your Aabo. That sentence-simple, but it lingers like a shadow at golden hour, soft, honest, unfiltered. See, I stare at mirrors and moments, trying to trace the outlines of a father I’ve never met-yet somehow must become. Trying to shape love from echoes, build trust from silence, and walk steady in rooms where my reflection still doubts its own frame. Perceptions. They say men like us carry steel in our bones but I’ve learned that tenderness is tougher. That to raise daughters is to cradle the future in your arms- not with strength alone, but with softness wrapped in consistency, discipline dipped in laughter, presence louder than promises. I want to be her anchor, the calm in her storm, the lesson in her legacy. Not just a provider, but a presence- the first man she ever trusts, and never has to unlearn. I wonder… Will she hold my hand without fear? Will she say “my Baba always showed up”? Will she brag about me the way you light up when you speak of your Aabo, as if he wrote the blueprint of love on your soul? That’s what I want. Not perfection- just enough love to feel immortal in the eyes of someone who carries my name, and maybe, my laugh. So I sit here, in the stillness of this reflection, praying that perception one day aligns- that when she speaks of me, it’ll be with the kind of reverence you reserve for your Aabo. Because if she loves me like that… Then maybe, just maybe, I got it right.