The Weight of Sacrifice
College was hard. Grad school was brutal. I worked nights tutoring kids, translated documents, lived on ramen and hope.
Each holiday, when I came home, Dad looked thinner, his back more bent, his hands cracked from years of labor.
One day, I saw him slumped at the base of a scaffold, breathing hard.
“Dad, please rest,” I begged.
He smiled faintly.
“Dad can still handle it. When I get tired, I think: I’m raising a doctor. That makes me proud.”
I couldn’t tell him then that a doctorate would take years more. Instead, I just held his hand and silently vowed:
I’ll finish this—for him.
