A Trip with Dad

Sharing this trip with him, it’d, made you feel closer than never before to your own father, translated…

My father drove the black SUV, winded along the colorful landscapes of Taiwan Route 14. The wind is blowing, the fogs, swaying, it’d reminded of over twenty years ago when my father dropped me off at my dorm.

My father looked serious, and since I was younger, I’d not dared acted intimate toward him at all, until after I married and had children, seeing how the kids would run toward their grandfather, and started fighting over who gets to sit in his lap, and that was when my father’s smiles curled up on his lips, something I’d never gotten the chance to experience growing up.

And, the alone time I had in the car with my father, passed through in the silence. As we’d started driving out together, he’d gotten used to adjust the radio dial to the traffic channel, and FM 104.9, for the music, I’d attempted to strike up conversations with him, but to no avail, and in the end, I’d, decided to get some shuteye. As the car started and stopped repeatedly, I could fall into a deep sleep, until my father called out, “We’re here!”, I’d started to, wake up.

Those days of returning home from high school on the weekends, I’d hoped my father would drive me, to avoid waving goodbye in tears with my mother. Riding on the busses is a way of moving away from home; but as I got in the car with dad, my home is moving with me.

Up to now, I’m still not used to striking up casual conversations with my father, but, after I married my husband had more to talk about with my father, in their areas of expertise: electrical engineering, the information technologies, to the farm and the fruits being planted………every time my husband told me about his conversation with my father, I’d traced the way my father looked as he’d chatted with my husband.

Before my father retired, he’d worked at Lishan Service Station, the roads leading up to the station were bumpy, the low temperatures of winter would attack, along with how he’d not eaten well or healthy there, caused his body to ail, and, hereditary illnesses became, the “gift” that forced him into retirement. But it’d not stopped him from inviting us to the mountains to sightsee, this time, through my father’s friend, we were lucky to get a room at the hard-to-book Shoushan Farm, having the opportunity to trek up the mountains, to savor the peaches, to ride between the mountains with my father; my husband drove his car and followed along, and this time, although I’d not shared the same car as my father, looking at the 3,000meter above-sea-level Hehuan Mountain range, the lines, steady like the ocean waves, it’s just as soothing, as how my father had made me feel my whole life too.

So, this, is how this daughter connected with her father intimately, by sharing a trip with him, by being close to her father, it’d, taken away from the original thought of how distant they are from one another. It’d brought the daughter closer to her father.