My father came to collect me from school twenty-nine years late

Dear Delyara, My father left when I was nine. For months afterward, I waited beside the school gate because he had once promised to pick me up on Friday. Every Friday, I told my mother I wanted to walk home alone, then stood there until the teachers began locking doors. He never came. Today, I am thirty-eight and work at the same school as a counselor. At three twenty, I saw an old man standing outside reception asking for me. My father. I had not seen him in twenty-nine years. He looked much smaller than the person I had spent my childhood hating. He said he was dying and wanted to see me before it was too late. I asked why he had come to the school instead of calling. He said, “I remembered this was where I was supposed to pick you up.” I wanted that sentence to heal something. Instead, I became nine years old so quickly that I could smell the hot pavement outside the old gate. We sat in my office for forty minutes. He apologized. I listened. When he asked whether we could meet again, I said I did not know. He nodded and left. Through the window, I watched him cross the same parking lot where I had once searched every approaching car for his face. He finally came. I wish arriving could undo waiting.