A Few Random Thoughts on Father's Day

I didn't realize it was Father's Day until I switched on the computer today. In fact, I read two blog pieces one yesterday and one this morning by fellow bloggers. One was rather sad. The other was much happier. But both touched in one way or another the question of our relations with our parents. This set off a chain of thoughts about my own mother and my father.

Although I had both father and mother when I was born, they remained little more than biological parents. For various reasons, my natural mother left me and my elder brothers and younger sister  when I was in primary 2. From then on, I never had a mother. She never returned nor saw us until I became a lawyer when, she suddenly telephoned me one day to claim her dues as my "mother" presumably under my obligations to her under the Confucian values of "filial piety". She died last year. But even before she left us, she had never been what I now know to be a true mother. I was left in the care of one after another of our "amahs" paid for by my father even during the times when she was living with us. I suppose that only reason why she got the right to claim her "dues" from me is that she had given me the greatest gift of all: life itself. I was inside her uterus for about 9 months. I cannot think of any other rational basis of her claim to my support. If one believed in the Hindu/Buddhst doctrine of "karmic debt", perhaps one could say that I owed it to her in my previous life for some favors or others she bestowed on me which I never repaid. If one believed in Buddhist dogma, then perhaps I might have benefitted enormously from the prayers she offered to the Buddha on my behalf without my knowledge, she being a very devout Buddhist. There is little doubt that I have so far been an extremely "lucky" guy. There is hardly a problem I have not been able to resolve one way or another, even the most difficult, albeit with some hiccups in some of the more difficult ones. 

My own father died more than 30 years ago. He was the only child in the family and had been spoiled by my paternal grandmother. He had a sharp mind. He made a lot of money when he was young. As with so many men, once he had got a bit of money, he fooled around with other women. I did not understand then. I do now. It was in fact the custom in those days. But custom or no custom, I only remember how I hated all those women he brought around to our house from time to time and whom we were asked to call "auntie" when I was a child. We were made to do errands for them! And one time, he even thought of taking one of them as his fourth concubine! All 5 of his children objected. He backed down.

I remember that for some reasons, when I was about 4 years old, when I was in my first year of kindergarten, we were suddenly made to leave the house where I was born and was made to move first to the ground floor of a newly built row of village houses in the Kowloon City area and then some two years later to a very dusty, dirty and noisy small attic the ground floor of which was a weaving factory whose looms seemed never to stop, producing the most annoying "clik-clak" sound when they hit each other in their endless operations. There I contracted jaundice , my mother had TB and I was infected by what was called "100-day cough" or "chicken cough". I remember having to take some very bitter Chinese herbalist medicine eveyday and some pig's liver soup which I hated and some honey with two types of ground almonds and lotus leaves which tasted alright. I had to quit school for about 5 months. I was fed by a very fat lady amah in her early 30s who came from the "4 counties" (四邑) speaking Mui county (梅縣) dialect. I still remember the smell of the oil which she used on her hair, which she would tie into a long pig tail behind her "sam-fu". During that time, my father took his second concubine, my step mother, his third wife from whom I had an additional younger sister. . 

At the time I quit primary 2 , I loved going to school because I was a darling of all my female teachers. When I first heard from my mother that I had to quit school, my little mind was filled with an unnameable panic. I cried and cried and cried. As a last resort, I asked to talk to the school principal, with tears all over my face and a nose made runny with them. She was tom-boy type woman, very tough. We were never allowed to enter her office without first having to go through her thin witch-like personal secretary with a long sharp face and an aguiline nose.  All the pupils were afraid of her because whenever we did not "behave", we would be asked into her room by her secretary and given the cane and a demerit. But she seemed to like me and from time to time, for some reasons which totally escaped me, she would ask me to go into that little hut at the back of the school, close to the sand playing pitch, which doubled up both as her living quarters and private office and there she would give me a candy or some wafers which I loved and sometimes a glass of milk. But upon hearing the news of my quitting school, I was so afraid I would never be able to go back to school again and since in my little mind, she was the most powerful figure at the whole school, I asked to speak to her in the hope that I would be permitted to go back with her assistance. It was then just after Christmas. She told me not to worry. I remember asking my mother many times after that when I could go back to school but she never gave me any definite reply. All she said was that I might be able to go back when I recovered from my long illness. To get back to school as quickly as possible, I braced myself to take those very bitter Chinese herbalist concoctions served to me as a thick black soup with some yellowish froth around the rim of the big china bowl. I got to take two of those everyday. I remember that whenever I thought about not being able to return to school, I sobbed, especially when I recalled the fun I had with my friends in school. I recall a glass cupboard in the one storey school hall where there were placed in several glass partitioning plates many beautiful plastic and metal toy soldiers, with tanks and electric trains and even a model fighter plane. I do not know how many hours of my recessses and my lunch hours before afternoon classes began were whiled away there with my face glued to the glass door to the cupboard. I would imagine all kinds of possible stories with the soldiers doing all kinds of exciting battles with each other, getting wounded but bravely fighting on and sometimes I would sketch them out on what was then called "writing pad paper" (柏紙簿). These were happy "dream times". Fortunately, when school resumed in September the same year, I was promoted to primary three despite not having taken any final examination and I was back in the house where I was born but by then, my mother had left. 

My father was a clever business man. But I do not think he knew the meaning of love. He only knew passions and drives. He was a driven man. He was driven by his instincts. Perhaps for him, love consisted of lust and money but to have love, one must have money, the same way that the letter "m " inevitably follows the letter "l" in the English aphabet.  I feel sorry for him. He did not know what he was doing and why he was doing what he was doing. This is what sparked my interest in philosophy when I was 16 when I bought my first book of philosophy at a second hand book store at the end of the street where I was then living with my father, then in vastly diminished circumstances. At that time, I already had to take up two private tuition jobs to supplement family income. Whilst my friends could stay on the football field or the ping pong table after school, I had to rush home one or twice a week to go to the market and prepare dinner for the whole family on days I did not need to give private lessons to primary school kids. I asked myself many questions about life. There were so many things I could not understand. In any event, I bought my first book of philosophy there. The book was Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy". I bought that excellent book at the ridiculous price of HK1.00! The was the value of philosophy! Perhaps it hasn't appreciated much since then. But whatever the value of philosophy may be, I received the shock of my life after reading it. I was so surprised that none of the philosophers appeared to agree with any of the others on various topics like what is truth, what is good, what is beauty, what is the full extent of man's liberty, what is the best type of society that man can have etc. Each one of the philosophers seemed so persuasive and believable until you read the next! ( Sounds so remarkably like ladies' dresses, shoes, lovers!?)  I am still reading philosophy on my own, not that I believe that I would ever be able find out what the "true" answers to various questions should be but at least I need to find some justifications for "my" personal answers to those questions.

My reflections upon my emotionally distant relationships with my parents before I went to mass at the Cathedral today took a happier turn by an incident which occurred during the mass. There was a young couple sitting in the pew in front of me. They had a young kid. From her size and the fact that she was not yet able to say any word, I think she would be less than a year old. She was being held sometimes by her mother and sometimes by her father, her fat little head lying so comfortably against the head and neck of her parents. She had a chubby face, very big, round, lively and watery eyes.  She was constantly moving about out of curiosity. She wanted to explore the strange and mysterious world around her. Her eyes landed on mine. She held out her little chubby fingers to me, time and again. She was smiling at me and waving her fingers. I reached out my hand. She held it. She shook it a few times. She chuckled happily. I smiled back. Perhaps she was pleased that she succeeded in drawing my attention. Then she released my finger. She waved her fingers at me again. To attract me, she gave me another one of her sunny smiles. I reached out my finger to her again. She held it again, smiled, released it again and so on and so on. She was such a happy child. Her happiness was infectious. She is our hope. Her smile is the smile of Life. By her smile, she made me forget my previous disappointment with life. It was so innocent! It took so little. Just a few smiles! She has transported me away from my past. It was so quick. It happened at the speed of light! She brought me back to the present, instantly. And the present is so full of the sunshine of her smiles, the unalloyed glee of her chuckles, and the sparkle of trust in her big round eyes!