The father’s show of affection, that’s made the daughter feel kinda awkward at the moment, but as she’d remembered the instance, it’d, warmed her up, translated…
One day, there was only my father and I at home, it was, close to lunchtime, so I’d told him that I’m going out to get the packed lunches, but, he’d insisted on cooking. My father used to be a chef, he’d become famous for his cooking skills in our friends’ and relatives’ life, from before, when there wasn’t a grand scale event, he’d gone to help cook the foods voluntarily. This particular afternoon, there was just, the two of us, I couldn’t understand why he’d felt, compelled to cook.
But, my father seemed very enthusiastic about it, he’d made several dishes, of them, the clams with the tempeh and the broiled fatty pork were my favorites, I’d dug right in, as I was stuffing myself, I felt, that my father was just, watching me eat, and looked at me from time to time. “What’s wrong?”, I’d inquired, stopping my eating. My father said, “I don’t recall every feeding you food when you were little.”, I’d rewound through the memories—and, nope! I’d recalled, that back then, it was always my mother, or my older sisters who were over ten years old, who’d fed me, but, I was so young then, how can I possibly remember things right? I’d told my father, “You surely have had! It’s been that long ago, you’d forgotten about it.” But my father insisted on not having fed me, “back then, work was too busy, and it wasn’t going well at all, I’d often fallen into a foul mood………I’m so sorry!”
from the papers…
Then, my father mixed the oysters with tempeh, added the fatty pork on top, dipped in soy sauce, turned toward me, said, “Come! Let me feed you.” I was surprised and shocked, and hollered out at him, “No! I’m already middle aged, it’s so awkward!”, but my father stated, “It’s not like anybody else is around to see it.” Then, “Ahhhhhhh, open your mouth wide.”, and, I’d, actually, opened up my mouth wide, and, allowed my father, to place those foods into my mouth. But, I’d, closed my lips immediately afterwards, and refused to allow him to feed me any more foods.
I’d, slowly, savored the food inside my mouth, there’s that taste of sweetness, in the saltiness of the tempeh sauce, the fatty pork that’s dipped in soy sauce tasted soft, and there was that sweetness, that spread throughout my mouth. In this multiple layers of deliciousness, everything my father did for me started playing out like segments of a movie, they’d all, appeared, before my eyes. So, that, is how it feels, being fed by my father!
And now, my father had died since a very long time, back then, I’d worried, that he may have become demented, wanting, to feed me; until I’d gotten older myself, did I slowly come to understand, that all the fathers in the world are the same, felt that they’d not done enough for their young, that they’d not given their young enough love. And, how it’d felt during that lunch, as he’d fed me the food, will always be on my heart.
“say ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”, not my photograph…
This, was the father’s show of love for his child, because he’d had to work while his children were growing up, he’d probably, missed most of the growth processes that his children had gone through, and, there came an opportunity, for the man, to become intimate with his daughter, and naturally, he’d, taken it, and, the woman felt somewhat awkward, because, perhaps, she wasn’t used to this sort of intimacy with her father, but now, the memories of the time her father fed her the food will always be on her mind, it’d become, this prominent memory for her now.
Life, the Obstacle Course 