A Father Forgets.....

I was brought up in a Chindian family that was both strict and conventional. Which meant my dad and mom was not afraid of killing my brother or me.

"If I get rid of one, I will make another one. And I will tell the new one what an idiot the first one was." - Russell Peters

So, we didn't really get words of encouragement that didn't include threats of medieval torture at worst and disowning at best. We didn't really understand what disowning really meant. We were confused because we knew it meant we won't be staying with our parents, which wasn't all that bad, but could we come back for food and clean clothes?

We also didn't get hugs and comforted when we were sad, because they didn't really know how to do it. My son got his first major government exam this week and I was disappointed. He had 2 C's and I was very downcast. I mean, I had straight A's and I was not known to get C's. While I was not exactly a genius, I was well above average.

Then I came across and article in a book I was reading. It was written by Livingstone Larned. It was an article that opened my mind and my heart.

Listen, son; I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road, I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your friends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive - and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding - this was my reward to your for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of yours was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy - a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

I did not realize the pain he has gone through and his own disappointment of having disappointed me. How unfair and easy I was to judge him as an adult when he is only a 12 year old boy, going through a Chinese education system when we don't speak Mandarin as our first language. When he had to sit through 2 additional papers than other schools and when he actually brought home 3 As and 2 Bs.

Tomorrow, I buying him his own 50" LED TV and PS3.