#19. Letters to Sam

Dear Khaulah,

Assalaamualaikum WBT.

How have you been baby girl? Sometimes writing to you feels like I'm travelling through time - at one time to the future when you are reading this, and at another to your past when this letter was written. Our nows might be different in this alphabet world but know that we will always love you the same in sya Allah.

I can see that you love books, Khaulah. That makes three of us for now haha.. I always loved reading books since young and collecting them too. It's called bibliophile. Right now I'm still struggling to regain that enthusiasm though..

One of the book that I used to have was 'Letters to Sam', a book comprises of letters from a quadriplegic man to his autistic grandson, Sam. In one letter, I remember the man talked about something in the line of accepting one's shortcomings. The man, deprived of his four limbs always felt sad because other people seems to be so harsh on him driving very slowly - honked, frowned upon etc. One day he began to use the emergency light while driving very slow as usual and as a result, he experienced a totally different thing. Suddenly people seems to understand the situation and every once in a while some stranger would just wave their hand and smile while taking him over.

Khaulah, we can't hope that everyone understands us - our situations, our struggles, our shortcomings, the extremes of things we felt be it happiness or sadness, be it contentment or pain, but we can try to be more lenient, can't we? Give the emergency signals when necessary. You may think that you can handle things that is going on hence you don't need it, but to some people especially me and your mom, as your parents and friends, it will pain us too if we don't know what happened and what we can do to help. Open up a bit to those who care for you, the same goes for me too haha.. afterall, I too, don't really like explaining myself each and every time.

Oh and always do that thing that you always do okay? Ask help from Allah.

Love,
Dad.