1984. It could be no further back than that, for that is the year – the summer – in which my little sister was born. Sitting on his shoulders, among a crowd of people, watching something, someone, at the Orange Circle. We were on the north side of the plaza, facing east: It was the Olympic torch runner. I believe that I was wearing a yellow terrycloth jumpsuit. Later, it must have been that same summer, we were watching the fireworks from Disneyland, visible from the end of our street at night. Again sitting on his shoulders. I remember calling to my mum to come with us, to leave my little sister lying (asleep) on the yellow-plastic woven patio chairs, to come watch the fireworks with us, because the angels would watch over her.
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2009. Walking down Lyuben Karavelov Street in Sofia, there is sometimes a man, in his late 40s, say, who walks with his father. He walks with his father: Step. Step. Step. Step. He walks with his father, behind his father, hands under dad’s armpits, forming the backbone that dad no longer has, or the path that dad can no longer see, or the encouragement to continue just that one pace more, that dad no longer wills himself.
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Growing up, I would read articles in Good Housekeeping magazine about the trials of having one’s parents move in with you. It sounded like hell. Age, experience or a greater sense of the world outside of me have changed this opinion.

The man who walks his father is one of the most beautiful, most touching sights to have crossed my eyes in recent years. I want to do this for my father. I want him to move to Bulgaria.

My dad and I have a strange relationship. We are father and daughter, but also friend and friend. We share, we discuss, we advise and we argue. He has betrayed me – the ideals that I lodge on him, and in fact; I have surely betrayed him. He has hurt me, left me, disappointed me, consoled me, forgiven me, challenged me, protected me, wrought me to the breaking point, yet made me stronger. He is my father, and I love him.

There were times, early teenager times, again the result of reading silly magazines, that I expected my parents to become an embarrassment. This never happened, not with either of them. They were a source of pride. It is only when people think that we are dating, he and I, (he looks younger than his years) that it becomes kind of... funny.

I used to have nightmares that my parents would either get divorced, or that my dad would die. They were the only real nightmares that I would ever have. They stopped in 2004. Well, at least my dad is still alive.

There are still times when certain noises here, now, make me flash-think that he is present here: the turning of a page heard from a neighbour’s flat late at night, the sound of a step on a creaking wood floor early in the morning, like when he would used to come wake me up, singing softly.

He no longer, in my hearing, turns pages at night or sings softly in the morn. He is elsewhere, living in a place where none of us had ever considered. People make choices. Choices can be hard. He is my father, and I love him.