Happy as the Salt & Pepper

The simple birthday wish of his teenage son, on parent-child interactions, translated…

“Daddy, how do you feel about going to work in Hong Kong next week”, my youngest inquired.

The very first day of the Memorial Day weekend, the four of us treated the freeways as an oversized parking lot. In the traffic headed south, there were, many of us who didn’t have the energies, to drive out at midnight, or those who’d not wanted to leave our beds at night. Actually, we’d all become, somewhat immune of the traffic jams on the long holidays. From when the kids were still quite young, we’d sat in traffic, and played the game of words, we’d gotten lost in the word games, or that my wife and I would compare our dreams that we’d made ten years ago.

Maybe, it was as I was turning off the pass, my youngest asked me. Like how the T.V. news reporter placed the mic next to your lips intentionally. I’d not replied, but behaved like a politician who’d not had the answers, but tried to remain calm as possible.

A week later (with that footage of us, hanging out by the creeks).

As a family, we’d gathered in a small food shop close to our residence, to celebrate my youngest son’s birthday early. A birthday party, hosted in his name, I’d wanted to wash away that scent of loss of me leaving home the following day (and of course it’d not worked!). As the family horse played. He said, that he was, old enough, to get legally engaged and be married to someone, although I wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say.

“Daddy, what are your thoughts about heading off to Hong Kong to work next week?”, he’d come again. What’s coming, there was, NO way for me to evade it (but, heaven only knows what’s in his brain, other than paste).

“I’d asked you a few days back, but it’s like, you’d, dodged me.”

“Oh, is that so……”, I’d become, stuttered. “I can’t think yet! Because, what are your thoughts, now that you’re, sixteen?”, I’d dodged his question.

“Oh, just look at my IG, and you’ll know!”, he’d given me, a very Aries reply.

On his active page, there was a photo of him eating the meal, zooming in, on the salt and pepper plate by the squid. He’d made the salt and pepper mixture into a circle, with two dots in the middle of that, and a curve line underneath. And, the title on his activity now was, “I want my every day to be as happy as the salt and pepper.”

And so, this, is the simple wish of the child, because he didn’t need that much, but his parents’ love, and that’s what all kids need, their parents’ love, nothing more, see, a kid wants very little, and yet, some of you adults can’t even give that to your own young, why is that???