As We Drank & Talked Late that Night

Father and son, sharing a drink, intimacy, and conversation together, a very rare opportunity, for him, to get to know his own, father, translated…

My father was orphaned at a young age, raised by his distant relatives, so he was, always, a loner, silent, rarely shared any closeness with his wife and children.  In my memories, only at suppertime, would he have the shortened conversation with us.

In his old age, he’d become, demented, couldn’t express himself clearly, plus he was ailing physically, my mother put him on a strict diet code, she’d, banned him from drinking alcohol especially.

One summer I’d gone back home to Kaohsiung, that very evening, my mother, my older and younger brothers weren’t at home, my father told me, that he’d, had a stashed away, over a decade old bottle that my mother hadn’t found, asked me to go to the lanai on the rooftop for a drink.

like this, father and son, sharing conversation, and a drink together…photo from online

I’d rarely come home but once a year, and, my father seemed to be in a good mood, and so, for the very first time in over forty years, the two of us, father and son drank together.

The alcohol was from his own private brew, thick, with the strong scent of Chinese herbal medicine to it, and to this very day, I’d still remembered the scent, and the taste as I drank it down.  Like how the two of us, started as strangers at the beginning of the evening, but with the sips of the alcohol, my father let go of his tough exterior, and started recalling how he’d felt, living under someone else’s roof, how he was, bullied growing up, how he’d had to, swallow everything down hard…………and for that evening, we’re no longer, estranged father and son, we’d become, more like friends, and I’d, listened to him, tell the stories of old.

The clouds were a bit light that evening, the moon, bright, the conversation shared that evening by my father and I, I’d, still, remembered like it was, yesterday, was it, in the moment, or how he’d felt, that he’d not had, enough time left?  Or how, he was, set free, by his own, dementia then, that he wanted me, to know what his life was like, what made him, into, a strict father?

After that evening, I’d, returned back home more frequently, and, started spending time in conversations with my father, but, my father slowly, forgot, who I was, and perhaps, he also, forgot what we’d shared, late that night too.  Treating our parents with kindness and love, it needs to be in the now.

And so, this, is the father’s way, of finding closure, I suppose, to tell everything to his own son, before he forgot, and, that must’ve been the evening, where the two of them felt, very close to each other, and, I’m sure that this man felt glad, that he’d, had the opportunity, to get to know what made his father into who he was.