Between Mother’s and Father’s Days

“There is no such thing that’s age inappropriate. Individuals are vastly different from one another, yet our society has a tendency of mass producing a few prototypes.” – My father’s philosophy transcribed.

That’s why I got the book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres by Copernicus, as a fifth grader. I didn’t have a clue when I read it through, but for kids, books don’t have to be understood; the critical part is the exposure. Long before I entered college, I had sampled all kinds of outlandish books about religion, philosophy, UFOs, Qigong, and certain Western literature that was generally considered age appropriate. I guess it’s not common to see parents exchanging books with their teenagers on a daily basis. We visited temples and churches; we participated in several major forms of Qigong in the early nineties; we had planned a trip to the Purple Mountain Observatory, although that never happened with the arrival of his next marriage.

He’s a person with an unusually broad interest in almost everything. He majored in western medicine, but is more accomplished in Chinese herbs (he currently works in a pharmacy and occasionally teaches in a hospital or an institute). He plays guitar, accordion, digital piano, and probably other instruments I never heard of. He composes music and songs. He creates mini-symphonies using simulation software. Less often does he write short stories and crosstalk. When I was in second grade, he had me apprentice with a professional storyteller who used to perform in those Tea Taverns in the old days. I only had several classes with that old man, but the influence on me as a writer and speaker was enormous.

So far I would say, he’s probably had several thousands of friends in his life. I’m not talking about acquaintances. When he gets to know people he knows them well. He served in the navy for almost forty years. In fact, I can’t even estimate how many soldiers he had interacted with before he retired. He routinely took me to those yearly veteran banquets held in the base. It was mindshaking to watch those big men hugging one another, crying and collapsing to the floor. That’s why I always feel a special attachment to the military, especially the navy. After he retired he continued to befriend people with various social backgrounds, from jobless loners to managers of four-star hotels, from youngsters of my age to old ladies who could barely see or speak. He has the talent of winning people’s trust in a short time period, if not instantly. “Talking to the patients is an indispensible part of Chinese medicine,” he said. “望，闻，切，问。The modern clinics are so crowded that the patients often get the prescriptions even before they have a chance to describe all the symptoms.” His philosophy made him a popular doctor among old people.

Regardless of the type of a party, he’s always the focus of people’s attention. He has numerous stories, jokes, anecdotes, tricks. Never runs out of topics. To give you an example, he said he once met an old man, who told him an couplet displaced on the door of an old temple.

He said some of the words can’t be found in dictionaries, but are real. The second and the fourth words in the first half of the sentence read Ying3 and Hua2; the third and the fourth words in the second half read Suo3 and Lang3. I don’t know how true this is, but I loved it!

He always has sleep issues. Once he said to me, “Those who fall into sleep as soon as their heads touch the pillows just can’t be too intelligent.” I said hey, Dad, please don’t say that, although I think it’s generally true. His first marriage with my mother was almost ideal. I heard they never had a fight or an argument. They met in college before he went back to the army and she volunteered to go to the poorest village as a request of the Party’s Call. My mother had four younger siblings and was the only one who went to college. She was a diligent student, a singer and a dancer. Now my aunts and uncles still speak of her with ultimate admiration. “The moment I entered high school,” my oldest aunt always said to me, “I was recognized by all the teachers as XXX’s sister.”

To be fair, I feel bad for the aunt who was outshadowed by my mother. My aunt is an extremely nice woman who’s highly accomplished in women’s work. “See!” My uncle-in-law once showed me a yellow bed sheet. “Your aunt embroidered the whole thing before our wedding. All the flowers, the butterflies, the garden. Isn’t that amazing?” My grandma is strict with our women’s work. A constant criticism I received from her as a child was “Your stitches are too coarse. Be more patient!” I know this ancient activity is more about cultivating one’s virtues. Unfortunately, I’m never a person with much patience.

So when my father was remarried in less than two years after my mother passed away, you can imagine the fury from my mother’s family. Dare I say I was the only one who understood him? We are the same kind of persons who would tell everybody the minor mishaps that occur in our daily live, but the true suffers we endure are deeply buried in our hearts and revealed to nobody including family members. Since the funeral day some 26 years ago, the only brief conversation we ever had with regard to my mother was my inquiry about the disease that took her life. We never discussed about our sorrows. We never showed tears in front of each other. The one incident that almost slipped past my father’s guard happened when, one day, I attempted to improvise a melody on the piano (for a while, he had the habit of taking naps during my practice, although now, in retrospect, I wonder if those were true naps). It was a very short and simple melody. At the end I heard him saying, “I’d like to name this song, I’m Waiting for You.”

After I finished my first novel, I once tried exploring how my protagonists, Geneva and Sterling, would have gone through at the end of their lives. I had Geneva die a few years earlier. Sterling actually got remarried and had another son right before he left. I should never have done this! During the few weeks I was writing it, you could’ve caught me running experiments alone with tears all over my face. The pain of losing a loved one can be unbearable. It seemed logic to me that, if Geneva had outlived Sterling, she would’ve stayed single, but not the other way around. That’s because emotion-wise, men are more fragile than women. A lot more.

Because my father wasn’t able to face the loss and the loneliness (or the “desertion”, you may call it), he rushed into another marriage that made his next ten years miserable. I’m so glad to see that he’s living happily with his third wife now, so that I need only worry about my own stuff. It’s a real fortune to be born as a descendent of a wise man, who constantly exceeds the boundary of life, and helps others do so as well.