Posts tagged with "father"

See You In Toronto

Street

I’m so glad that Toronto remains a place where I can go to get away. There are places to stay, an end­less cycle of friends or acquain­tances to vis­it, and some­one else takes the wheel and dri­ves.

It’s amaz­ing to see how much Toronto has changed. How cer­tain streets down­town have turned into trendy, expen­sive shop­ping dis­tricts, a Canadian ver­sion of Rodeo Drive, and a far cry from the run-down roads I would vis­it every lunch in high school by rollerblade and sub­way to buy Magic cards and Warhammer fig­ures.

MindBender loves you

After Bill Clinton’s speech at the CNE, there was a brief ques­tion and answer peri­od. The host asked him, “What do you like most about Toronto?”, adding that Torontonians seem to have a sort of self-dep­re­cat­ing humour1. After mak­ing a diplo­mat­ic com­ment on the Aboriginal art as being his favourite thing, Clinton said, “You folks can make fun of your­self, but peo­ple would kill to live a soci­ety like this. You should be very proud.” I had to agree.

Dim sum

Before leav­ing, I had dim sum with my dad, and we caught up on each oth­ers lives a lit­tle bit. He sound­ed pret­ty hap­py when I called to ask him if he want­ed to go.

I bought a pair of wind­shield wipers but did­n’t replace them, bring­ing them with me to his house instead, hop­ing he could show me how to install them. I could just as eas­i­ly have read the car man­u­al, but I want­ed some­thing to share with him. Maybe now I can catch up on these father-son things that I seemed to have missed in my child­hood.

  1. I sup­pose you have to, with how well the Leafs have been doing in recent years. []

Finding Love For Two Bachelors

The fact that my dad and I are the eli­gi­ble bach­e­lors in the fam­i­ly means we get a lot of advice around the din­ner table. They bring up avail­able women. Friends of friends, daugh­ters of dance part­ners, or this-per­son-I-know.

It’s strange to come upon the sud­den real­iza­tion that my dad and I are at the same point in life. Does that make me old, or him young?

They ask us our tastes: Looks? Personality? Older or younger? I say, “Money”, but they know me well enough to know I’m jok­ing. A joke to hide my answer, for to reveal myself in this way is to expose a cer­tain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. So they side­step the ques­tion and ask me if I’m after any­one, think­ing that if I describe a per­son I’m inter­est­ed in, they’ll be able to fig­ure out what I’m look­ing for. It’s com­pli­cat­ed, I think to myself, so only reply with a “No”. They ask me if there’s any­one after me. “No”. That’s even more com­pli­cat­ed.

Last week, my grand­moth­er asked me how old I was. “28”, I told her. “Already! You’re almost 30. It’s time for you to get mar­ried.” She says if I stay in Hong Kong all the girls will be after me because I have some kind of gen­tle­man schol­ar look. My dad too; he’s the man’s man, who’s always been fun and pop­u­lar. And we have Canadian pass­ports. Apparently, we’re in demand.

But they also want to make sure we’re not get­ting involved with the wrong type of women. Someone who will take our mon­ey once we’re mar­ried, or force alimo­ny once they trap us with chil­dren. They tell us to keep an eye on each oth­er. I say that my dad does­n’t need my approval if he wants to get mar­ried, but I don’t need his approval either. So they tell us to bring our girls to meet them, to be sure they’re okay.

I won­der; is love this easy for oth­er peo­ple? Something oth­ers can con­trol, when I can’t con­trol it myself?

Typical Of My Dad

(This hap­pened in Chinese.)

Around the din­ner table, my aunt men­tioned that it was her daugh­ter’s birth­day, and that it hap­pened to be Friday the 13th. My dad said to me, “Isn’t your birth­day on the 13th too?”

I don’t know”, I said rather loud and sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

My dad was in trou­ble. All the fam­i­ly around us real­ized that he does­n’t know my birth­day. So he said a date (and year, as if recit­ing a his­tor­i­cal event) with a hint of uncer­tain­ty in his voice.

I don’t think he was ever more relieved than when I told him he was right. Not because he got the right date, but because he did­n’t seem like such a bad father to every­one else.

Father-Son Bonding

I called my dad on his birth­day this week. After the divorce I would nev­er call him, spe­cial occa­sion or not, sim­ply because I need­ed to dis­tance myself from the sit­u­a­tion. He did call me on mine last year though, which reestab­lish­es a sort of prece­dence and rit­u­al, and he actu­al­ly thanked me for the call.

We made the usu­al small talk, about work and home.

Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG 2006

He told me he bought a car: a 2006 Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG hard-top con­vert­ible with 18″ rims and 7‑speed-auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion. He’s going to keep the Beemer for win­ter dri­ving. It filled my heart with qui­et joy when he said I could dri­ve it the next time I vis­it­ed him. Not so much because he was let­ting me (for I was always allowed to dri­ve the Sportline 300CE while liv­ing at home), but because I could tell in his voice that he want­ed me to try it.

I asked him if there’s any his­to­ry of col­orec­tal can­cer in the fam­i­ly, which the doc­tor want­ed to know at my last appoint­ment, to which my dad answered, thank­ful­ly, no. He shared with me his own health con­cerns, the med­ical terms of which he only knows in Chinese. These are things I avoid ask­ing about when I vis­it him, as he pops some pills from a bot­tle kept with the dish­es in the kitchen, and I real­ize that I’m learn­ing more about my dad than ever. It’s not so much out of a need for pri­va­cy or avoid­ance of embar­rass­ment, but sim­ply out of con­ve­nience, as these top­ics would nev­er get brought up.

It’s strange to bond with him in this way, only after so many years of leav­ing home.

I remem­ber him try­ing to teach me pho­tog­ra­phy when I was younger, but he soon lost inter­est, in both pho­tog­ra­phy and me1. Maybe it’s the dis­tance that makes us appre­ci­ate each oth­er more, and it would­n’t be the same if we lived in the same city.

In a way, I’m glad to have the rela­tion­ship now, and I’m able to for­get that I’ve nev­er had it for most of my life.

  1. As such, all my pho­tog­ra­phy is self-taught, aside from one trick used to zoom a lens towards the sub­ject so that the edges are blurred that he showed me at the Statue of Liberty. []

Conversations With My Father

We’re stand­ing in his garage in our paja­mas, with win­ter coats on. After a short dri­ve around the block to bring the oil up to tem­per­a­ture, he pulls out the bright orange dip­stick to teach me how to check the lev­el.

Even though he’s nev­er seen what’s under this hood before, he knows where every­thing is. Every noz­zle for every flu­id, every con­nec­tor to every part. A sixth sense that all dads seem to have, like when a steak is cooked medi­um rare, and when the TV is just big enough.

This is the first time we’ve ever done some­thing like this. A strange sort of bond­ing I rarely had in my child­hood.

Inside, I’m show­ing him how to use Photoshop, to take the wrin­kles out of his friend’s faces. Anything helps at this age, I sup­pose.

In my heart, I wish my dad had shown more inter­est in my pho­tog­ra­phy. I wish he want­ed one of the prints I brought, maybe to show oth­er peo­ple and say that he was proud of me. But he did­n’t. And I say noth­ing because it’s one of those things that should­n’t have to be said.

He keeps bring­ing up his dance part­ner. The per­son who called him to make sure I arrived safe­ly from the dri­ve. He wears two new ear­rings in pierc­ings that weren’t there the last time I saw him, a gift from her, and I won­der if “dance part­ner” is his euphemism for “mom­my”.

I’m too scared to ask.

There’s no rea­son for me to stay more than a night, because there’s noth­ing more to be said.