Remembering My Late Husband on His Birthday

Tomorrow, he would be 48 years old. I miss his presence, miss everything about him, and miss everything about myself in his presence.

My ears have long entered a silence place, where they are deprived of loving words. “Have I told you I love you today, geliefde (darling in Dutch)?” Most of the time, I was in the kitchen, hunched over the stove. He stood behind me, hands wrapped around my waist, whispering sweet nothings into my ears. His words slid smoothly down my ear cannel, and his warm breath tickled the ear’ hairs shivering. My heart swelled up, and I grew slightly intoxicated. Then, I felt a much stronger sensation, his warm moist tong sweeping through the labyrinth of my ear, the one he chose to gift at the moment. The murmuring of sweet nothing was my daily adhan to love.

Every day after work, he would quickly change out of his suits, which he considered dirty from his work at the hospital. He would come into the kitchen, and started the conversation with, “How are you, geliefde?” He made tea for us, sliced a few pieces of cheese, and perhaps a few squares of chocolates, too. If I was too involved in preparing dinner, he would tap the table lightly with him palm and fingers, “Come, sit with me, Geliefde! I want to look into your eyes.” As if he could find treasures in my eyes, which I was never able to grasp.

Friday evenings, he drove us to dinner in town. “Darling, it takes an hour to drive there, and another hour to drive back. You must be tired from a week’s work. I don’t mind making dinner at home.” I cared about his health. He held onto my left hand with his right hand, placing on the cup-tray between the front seats in our minivan, “I love driving like this. I love having you sitting next me.”

I missed the ritual I kept while I was living with him. Everyday, I sent him to work, and welcomed him home. We had a large foyer where he kept his suit jacket and his dress shoes. After he was all dressed and ready to leave, he stood at the door and called out to me, “I am leaving, geliefde!” I dropped everything at hand and dashed to him, we kissed and hugged, “Have a good day, Darling.” We walked outside together. Standing, I watched him getting into his car parked under two gigantic pine trees, and waved at him as he drove passing the front door. Getting back into the kitchen, at the other side of the house, I followed him and his car as he drove along the path next to our backyard, until they all disappeared from my view. When it was time for him to come home, my eyes frequently glanced to the path, and my eras spied the front door lock. As soon as he walked inside the door, I fluttered to him. We hugged and kissed, and asked about each other’s half day. Yes, we were together every half-day. He came home for lunch as much as he could, and he came almost all the time. He was home for ten minutes if he had noon meeting to attend to.

So many times, the phone would ring, as my fingers were about to touch it. It was he calling from work, and it was I trying to reach him. There was nothing urgent to say, except we thought of each other, at the same time. It happened when I was at work, and later when I stayed at home, all the thirteen years.

I was working as an embryologist when he was doing his medical residency. I loved lunchtime when he worked at the cancer center one block away from my clinic. Ever so often, my intuition led me to turn around and away from my desk. There, I would find him standing at the office door. He had let himself in through the laboratory door, so quietly as if it was a forbidden love. He was content standing and observing me while I hunched over my study and lab reports. After being discovered, he extended his invitation of lunch at the nearby Subway, the closest place for our limited break time.

More than four years later, I still long for this clinging love. A love, with its habits and rituals, accompanied me for more than thirteen years. A love, full of selflessness, full of acceptances, full of synchronicity, was a magic beanstalk. It grew overnight, blossomed for so long, and fell so suddenly. I was the lucky one to have had a magic bean, once.

A Father's Love

The other day, I sliced a tomato into eight sections, and took the tough end out with a sharp knife. As I was doing this, I wondered why I liked tomatoes so much, often eating it plain and raw. A picture slowly came into view, a pair of hands with very long fingers, working delicately and slowly, with care and resolve, over a tomato over a small bowl. These were my father’s hands.

Every summer, mother bought heirloom tomatoes from the market. In the 1970s in China, fruits were expensive, and some like watermelon, was rationed every so often. But vegetables were cheap; anyway, the government decided the prices. However, it wasn’t easy to get vegetables, as pretty much everything was in short supply. Years later, residing in the US, I read with amusement that foreign diplomats learned the words “Mei You”, meaning “don’t have” in Chinese as soon as they stepped on Chinese soil during that period. Mother got up early everyday, and was at the market before its opening at 6:00 a.m.

Father always moved slowly, and did everything in a delicate and through manner. Father would coax me into eating a tomato. He first poured hot water from a thermos into a bowl, immersed a tomato into the hot water, then watched and waited. After a few minutes, he picked up the tomato, and pinched up the tomato skin with the fingernails of his right thumb and his right index finger. He worked at it ever so lowly, as if he didn’t want to lose a spec of the tomato other than the skin, and as if he would be judged by the smoothness of the surface after the peeling. Upon inspecting that every bits and pieces of the skin was off, father carefully put the tomato back into the empty bowl, and delicately laid a thin coat of sugar over it. “Te Dar”, father had the perfect fruit for me on a hot summer day. During the most difficult economic time in China, father knew how to lure me with an attractive, sweet and juicy fruit, a red tomato wearing a snow-white coat.

As I took small bites into the sweetened tomato, father’s face lightened up with a satisfying smile. It was a mission to him to see me enjoying my food and nourishing my growing body. Father was much happier than me watching me eating the tomato, as if the juice running through his heart was sweeter and tastier than the tomato pieces dropped into my belly. A father’s love is the alchemy.

Looking at the tomato in front of me on the cutting board, I came to a realization that I had never handled a tomato with care and precision like my father. I started to question whether it was too violent the way I cut through the flesh with a knife swiftly and mindlessly. At a deeper level, I asked myself whether I practiced proper love and care for myself.

Life follows neither the book of love and kindness, nor the book of fairness and justice. I experienced the most tragic loss, hence, profound suffering. Even years later, tears streamed down my eyes when I thought of what was going through my father’s mind hearing my tragedy thousands miles away in China. I was born at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a very difficult time in modern Chinese history. Father lived on bare necessity, deprived himself of all pleasures, in ensuring that I grew up as healthy, happy and educated as he could possibly afford, with his meager earnings but infinite love. If I were a tree, father was the gardener. He cared for me with the utmost love and gentleness, from a seedling to a young tree. He released me with the confidence that I was strong enough to endure the weather and to face the ups and downs.

Yet, there are times the storm is so ferocious that trees are toppled. I lasted out the human tragedy with almost all branches striped off my trunk. When the goings gets tough, I think of my father and my father’s love. To not to care and love myself properly is to revolt against my father and his love.

For it was my father’s heart and soul, I came to be me today. To honor my father’s love, I will keep at it, whether to skip in a flower garden, or to bush whack on a rugged mountain.

Why Travel to the Distant Lands

I met a fellow attendee outside a classroom at a writers' workshop yesterday. He is working on a novel, a piece left by his Mexican friend who passed away recently. I assume it is a real act of generosity and an honor to their friendship.

I found him with interesting experiences, volunteering for Peace Corp. in the Philippine, studying Hinduism in India, teaching English in Japan, and living in Mexico. He spent two to five years at each location. I asked him how the adjustments of coming back home were. “Not very well,” was his answer. I asked whether people found his experience interesting. His answer was, “People usually have a lot to talk about when they spend a week abroad. Their friends here seem to relate to these accounts. After spending years at a place, I am lost in what to say.” I was really interested in hearing his stories in the Philippine, but I heard only generic descriptions, “People are very tribal”, “They are very friendly”, and “I lived in a hut by the beach”. I tried to bring the conversation to life by coaxing him with historic events in the Philippine during the time of his stay; again I was frustrated with scant details. I wonder what had led to the disappearances of the vividness and the richness of living abroad. I question if he had ever opened his senses and his mind to the foreign lands.

My eventual question of his adventure is “What drew him to these distant places?” Perhaps it is better to ask “What made him leaving home?”

Perhaps he missed something. He searched for it, but without the comprehension of what it was. And so, the search was fruitless and pointless.

It is embarrassing in looking for a pair of glasses one has pushed onto his forehead. It is distressing looking for the missing and also the unknown.