It is the name you learned to speak before you learned where you came from. The lap you sat in when you first heard your origin story. This is where we come from. This is who we are. These are the things a father tells a child.
It is the title we give to the one who taught us to fish, the same hands that tucked you in at night. The ones whose pressure you feared, their presence reminding you of helplessness. His is the strength you want. The kind that earns a brag: My dad could beat up your dad.
He is who you want to impress, the god you still worship, the only one who can tell you what your true name is. It is his blessing you seek, the king young heroes still try to impress, sailing across the world for a cup.
I wonder if you know what I’m talking about, if you know who I’m talking to. I wonder if you have ever entered a cave searching for the face of a man whose shadow now shows in your smile. I wonder if you know what you are now.
The one who comes home late. Who still has to mow. Who loses his temper sometimes. Who has to pay bills.
Dad.
The first word shot into the world now come back, hooping like a boomerang, a forty-year-arc leading . . . to this.
I love your first line: "It is the name you learned to speak before you learned where you came from."