Father's Day: Recognize, Not Idealize

My dad was a taxi driver. When I was little, he always had to leave home after dinner because he had to go to work for the night shift. One of the most memorable event that happened between me and my father when I was in kindergarten was that one night when my father was on the way out for work, I was already drifting asleep. But when I heard the metal door closed, I got up right away to rush to the door to say goodbye to my father, as I did every night. I got up so fast that I slammed my forehead onto the bed headboard and it bled all over my face. I cried so loud that everyone in the house, my mom, my sister, and even my father who had just gone out of the door had to return to come to see what happened. The bleeding was bad and because the cut was on the head, the amount of blood could look quite worrisome. But thinking back, as soon as the bleeding was stopped, it was actually not as serious as it looked. I didn't get a concussion or anything. The scar is still there today, just right above the hairline. A small batch of scalp that hair doesn't grow out. It was an event that family and relatives talked about and made fun of, and to say how much I loved my father.

Idealization of Fathers

But fathers are, of course, human beings. That sounds funny. But I am saying it because the society, the media, the institutions, etc. tend to idealize fathers, mothers, and plainly just families in general. And Father's Day is part of that kind of idealization and tradition.

Perhaps the ideal image of a father has changed over time, and cultural differences also exist. But from my view point at least, a child of the 90s and a native of Macau, China, the ideal image of fatherhood is a patriarch figure who is strong, the breadwinner, someone who "holds up" the family as my native language Cantonese characterizes it.

Contradictory enough, my father did all those things and yet my actual experiences with my father are still so far from the idealized father in my mind. Does anyone reading this feel that way as well?

Love is One Side. Hate is the Other

Children depends on the love of the adults around them to survive, grow and develop. Of course as children we naturally love, respect, and look up to our elders because from the moment we were born, we are vulnerable. We depend on our parents for everything, food, shelter, care, and love in order to be nurtured and grow up healthily.

While love of children toward parents naturally exists, just as the silly baby me broke my head in order to say goodbye and good night before my father left home for work, truth to be told, hate also developed as part of the relationship.

I remember one time I was taking a shower. I must have been of middle school age or so. My father suddenly came into the bathroom and open the shower curtain as a way to pull a prank on me. I started to yell at him and probably told him to get out or something to that effect. He got angry and said that it should not matter because he was my father, and that there was nothing of my body that he could not see. Basically not a very new concept that many parents nowadays still insist upon: total and complete control over their children.

Here is another one that was classic. I must have been also in middle school age. I wanted to go to a barber shop to get a haircut. But my father would not let me. He claimed that the family could save money by him giving me a haircut with the hair clipper that he bought. Despite my protesting, I was given no choice and was forced to sit there and got my hair cut by him. No need to say, it was ugly as hell, and I simply cried the moment I looked into the mirror. And all he did was to laugh at me, said that I should not cry because that made me look like a sissy.

But the highest degree of abuse I had endured in childhood from my father was that he had hit me physically, losing his temper and attacking me viciously. It wasn't all the time. It wasn't often. But it happened at least several times. To be more precise, it wasn't just his own action, but also his not stopping my mother's more often physical abuse of me and my sister. Sure, there are worse form of father-child(ren) relationships and abuses out there. But it does not make it right.

Corporal punishment is always wrong. Hitting children is always the fault of the parents. Parents who hit children are stupid and selfish because they do not think about the negative impact that would be made to the health and development of the child.

Such is the nature of the relationship of my father and I, part of it love, part of it hate.

But why does it matter for me to say all these? Why don't I just keep it fluffy and nice and stuck to how much I loved my father and what his good characters are? I mean it's Father's Day, right?

Well. First, it is because I don't think that, and I don't feel that. To do that is just dishonesty not only to my readers but most importantly to myself.

Over the years, understanding this love-hate relationship with my father is an important thing. There were such abusive and repressive things that my father had done to me since I started to find my way to be my individual own, namely since middle school really, the overwhelming feelings toward my father in my mind had been more hate than love. In a simple way, there had been a broke down of our relationship; it had gone sour.

The turning point of my life was my leaving Macau to study abroad in the United States. After I graduated from college, I had virtually lived in the United States for almost 10 years without going back to visit my family. During this time I just did not want to look back. I would have occasional contact over the phone with my parents. But most of time I just wanted as little to do with them as possible. I just blocked it out of my mind as much as I could. However, without these 10 years being away from them, I would not have had the opportunity to develop as my own person, to reflect on life, to draw the necessary conclusions that allowed me to have a different relationship with them.

Choice

An important question that I recently thought a lot about is if my father could have a different choice. My father has lived a very ordinary live. He was not well-educated. I believe he education reached only graduating from elementary school. But in that period of time, education was not guaranteed, nor high school education was required and expected to be the minimum educational level. My father and his several siblings, none of who received good education, went out to society at an early age and started to make a living for their family.

For my parents' generation, being unmarried was almost not a choice. Not being married made you an outcast, unable to be part of social life, almost living out of society. In a way, he had no choice. In a way, he had to work at a young age. He had to find someone to marry and form a family. He had to labor for this kind of traditional form of life without an alternative. Sure, he could have had made better choices parenting. But it still would not have changed the fundamental nature of the family relations. The abuse would only be the difference of matter of degree. I think this is the the critical point of thought that resolved the love-hate contradiction I have had for my father, allowed me embrace the both sides and to forgive him.

At the end of the day, as much as my father's love has been expressed in a form of distortion, he still had done right by me. He did spend years of savings for me to get a good education, so that I can have a better life. It is a cliche to say that. But it is more true and deeper than the way most people say it. It is not what my father and mother had expected what better live was, a better career, a better house, a wealthier family, you name it. It is what choice I can make for my life. It is a better life in which I can pursue freedom, ambitions, and happiness without being fettered by certain traditions.

This year, for me, Father's Day bears a new meaning. It isn't just the "thank you, dad, for bringing to the world and raising me." It is a recognition of the change he had made as a father for the life that I am able to live today.

P.S: Forgiveness but Not Reconciliation

In 2019, I went back to visit Macau. One day when I went out for lunch with my parents, they started talking about how they felt sorry what they have done to me and my sister. I think they must have been thinking and talking to each other much about this now that I have come back to see them after years. As they were talking, both of them started to tear up. I have never seen my father cry in front of me before. I did not say anything. I just listen to what they had to say. I couldn't say anything because my visiting them is my showing that I had already forgiven them. I couldn't say anything because despite of the forgiveness, I was not going to reconcile with a family life with them. I must continue to live my life as I see fit. The most that I can do for them nowadays is to help them by letting them confide in me, to listen to their problems since they are now in old age and living in relative isolation.

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