photo from online…
Love without saying it, translated…
There’s only fear that I’d felt toward my father as a child, no love, no closeness.
Perhaps, it’s because how he wasn’t at home most of the time, I’d not gotten a chance to spend time with him, it wasn’t until I was four or five, did I start to gain a concrete meaning of the word, “father”. Back then, the images of a father was: square face, wide forehead, fatty ears, thick lips. He was close to 5’10, about 176 to 198 pounds, his features made him look more like from the northern Chinese provinces than a gentle and mild student from the Jiangsu Provinces.
Going to the bath houses was the sweetest and most unusual memories that I’d shared with him. Some forty years ago, there’s not gas at every single house, getting a bath is a troublesome business. In the summers, it was all right, my mother would boil up a huge pot of water, scooped a couple of ladle’s worth into the basins, added some cold water, then, we’d be cleaned. And, although we could do the same for the winters, but, the water would get cold easily, and it was hard, to get cleaned, and so, my father would often take us to the Shanghai bath house.
I can no longer recall what those bathhouses looked like anymore. Just vaguely recalled that the five of us stayed in a big room, with the warm and heated up steam all around us, the mists became like this fog that surrounded us. My mother would wash our hairs for us first one by one, then, my father would rub our bodies hard, to get the dirt off of our bodies.
In my memories, my father had always used his thick and hard palms, and rubbed our bodies hard to clean them, he’d scrubbed us and laughed and told, “Look, so much dirt!”, and, my father used a bit too much force, and it’d actually, hurt a little, and in a little while, my body would become red all over, and, there would be so many prints of his hand all over my body, and, I’d always needed, to wait for half a day, until the palm and handprints totally, vanished. I’d always felt, that my father must loved scrubbing our bodies clean, because that, was the rare moments where he got the chance, to show his intimacies toward us.
As the youngest child who got into my first three choices in high school, my parents held higher expectations for me, but, this expectation had become, too heavy for me to carry. I actually felt very uneven, that my parents only demanded things from me, and not even cared for me as a person. But, the accident I was in, in my first year of high school, made me realized, that there was, this depth of love that’s, hidden underneath my father’s demanding expectations of me.
That day I rode the bus home, but because I was blocked by the crowd, I didn’t see the steps on the bus, and, missed a step, lost my balance, fallen, flat onto the pavements, I’d fallen limp, couldn’t move, for ten minutes, but, nobody bothered with me. After I’d gained the senses in my body back, my lumbar started hurting badly. I’d gone to the hospitals, and it was confirmed, I’d suffered damages to my lumbar spinal column, that it’d hit my nerve endings, and ever since, I’d been pained quite often, as my lower back started aching, although it wasn’t so hard that I couldn’t move, but, it was, this sort of tingling, numbing sensation that won’t go away. Every time my lower back started acting up, my father would apply the healing oils on my lower back with his big hands.
a father, watching over his baby boy, photo from online…
That, was a medicinal rub that helps with the circulation, the yellowish green color was enough for make you puke, it’d looked like the water in the toilet that wasn’t scrubbed clean, and, the scent was a bit more rancid, compared to the normal Chinese meds. Every time I’d applied it, the scent would fill up the entire room and didn’t go away, but, my father would always apply the ointment onto me like clockwork, used the heat in his palms, and repeatedly, going back and forth on my lower back, so the medicine can seep into my body. Back then, I’d always recalled, how he would, get the dirt off of my skin in the bath houses as a child.
In my second-year of high school, at the age of fifty, my father made an important decision: he’d left the grand-scale company with good benefits and stable source of income, and started owning and operating his own steel cans factory. Naturally, he did so, to provide us with an even better life. At first, the business was well, we quickly got a bigger house, and had a car too, and, all the fashionable furniture, my father brought home, the guitars, the stereo, the black vinyl disc………my older sisters had even, thrown several big parties at the house too.
I ‘kept believing, that my guitar will keep on accompanying the songs continually, that the music of ABBA and AIR Supply will keep on seeping throughout this extravagant house, but, this sudden onset of down turn, had changed the destiny of this family.
In my sophomore year in college, my father announced that he was bankrupt from making the bad business calls, and all of a sudden, we’d become, broke, we’d sold everything we can, car, house, gone overnight, we’d moved, from this grand-scale mansion, to this cramped up apartment.
My father became depressed, from his midlife failed business venture, back then, there was the law of if you can’t pay up your investors, you would get jailed, and, in those days where the debt collectors would come to collect, and that he’d needed to deal with the chaos of the factory closing down, he’d often just, sat and stared into space, silent.
accompanying his own child to grow up, not my photograph…
One evening at supper, don’t know what he’d asked me, but I’d, looked at him with a slanted gaze with impatience, and my father got so angered, slammed down his bowl and chopsticks, “You are in college now, you’re something all right, you look down on your father who’d failed in business, is that right?”, then, he got up, walked to the lanai, and gazed up into the distant stars. The very first time my father had misunderstood me and said something so harsh, I’d started sobbing, my tears fell into my bowl. My mother had that seriousness about her, told me to go and apologize to him on the lanai, I’d snuffed and cried, as I’d told my father I was sorry, but he’d still, ignored me, not said a word. At age nineteen, I’d become, dumbfounded, and just stood next to him, crying hard, not knowing how, to clean up this mess I’d made.
Many years later, I’d finally understood, that it was, my disrespectful attitude that’s, crushed the weakest part of him, he’d felt bad about how his failed business was dragging his wife and children down, and I’d, not saved his last inkling of pride for him.
Don’t know who’d advised it, but a friend or a relative suggested my father run away to the U.S. temporarily, maybe, it was, that he was, at his wit’s end, he’d gone too, but, in just a month, he’d come back. Running away is not timed, and, when he can come home, that’s not known at all, I guess, he was unable to let go of all of us, and couldn’t live with the pains of being separated from us. He’d rather face the trial, along with being incarcerated physically, for the sake of his own freedom of mind, at least, he was there with us, in the same regions.
I’d visited my father at jail with my mother a couple of times, he’d always smiled as he walked toward us, with the glass window, and talked to us using the phone. I’d forgotten what we’d talked about, perhaps, it was still how I’m doing in school, I just recalled, that even in that situation, he’d now bowed down, looked miniscule, but still carried his head high, and walked tall.
My father had been in jail for almost a year now, I’d gone to school, and not noticed anything different, but, I’m sure, that my mother’s days must’ve been hard. One day after class, I’d called home, my mother told me that my father came home; I can’t describe how happy I was at the moment. I’d left that phone dangling off the hook and started crying aloud by the side of the road. I ran home fast, saw him, and called out, “Dad”, and those tears that didn’t fall had, trickled, all the way, down my nasal passages into my throat, and I can’t talk anymore. For the very first time, I’d, let go of my shyness, took his hand, and, we’d gone out to celebrate his return.
It was, right, at that very moment, that I’d realized: how much I feared him, was exactly how much, I also, loved him too.
So, these are the memories you shared with your father, and, fathers are usually authority figures, which makes them harder to get close to, and, this article shows, just how the children longed to show their affections to the father, but without knowing how, and how the fathers showed their love for their young, by not stating it aloud, instead, they’d, used their actions to SHOW just how much they loved their children.