What Everything Is
Jimmy, a promising young illustrator from a magazine in our group, brought his father to the office today. They looked like a great team.
I was with them in the elevator earlier this morning and couldn't help overhearing their conversation.
"No matter what the joke is Dad, don't relate them to all the porn jokes you know."
"Why?" answered his Dad in the same whispered tone.
"Well...because you'd laugh really hard afterwards! I mean, I respect your vast collection of triple-x jokes, but this is my boss you're talking with, so please ... you know, restrain yourself a little."
His dad laughed - really loudly. A dandy looking lady shot them a killer wince and Jimmy abruptly said, "See?"
"Okay, I'll restrain it," chuckled his Dad. "Thank you!" Jimmy firmly replied, as they got off at the seventeenth floor.
And now, 10 o'clock at night, standing alone in my office, staring out the window, I can't help thinking of my own Dad. He had the craziest laugh too, and God! How he ate everything.
I was an orphan. Dad took me in when I was just a few days old and he raised me by himself. I always knew I was an orphan, but somehow with Dad, it was never a problem. "I'm your father, and I'm going to raise you good," he used to say.
It was Friday night after dinner. I can't exactly remember what I did, but it was bad.
Dad took me to his favorite place, the balcony of our apartment, and started smoking.
"You should stop smoking Dad, it's going to kill you," I'd say.
"Hey, we're outdoors, cut me some slack will you," he laughed.
"Don't tell me I didn't warn you okay."
His face went serious "Calvin," he said, staring off into the distance,"I love your grandmother. She meant everything to me," He turned, looked at me and smiled. I liked his smile.
It was about the marks I guess, my bad marks. I was quite a good son, so... I really can't remember, but that night has got to be the longest time he was ever serious about anything important.
"When I was in fourth grade, your grandmother decided which junior high I would go to. She went to the best high school in the district, the same high school that her eight brothers and sisters went to, and she decided I should go there as well. I was in the fourth grade and already she had told me everyday what university I'd go. I guess probably because it was cheap," he started off.
"When I finished elementary school, I ranked number one in my class. I got 9.75 on math, you believe that? I can't. I still can't." He laughed. I couldn't laugh. I was in the eighth grade at the time and I wasn't doing great at math. When I finished elementary school my math score was 4.23, a complete mess.
"But it wasn't enough. I couldn't enter the junior high she wanted me to go to..." he paused, "that was the worst day of my life."
"She gave everything for us, you know? And she'd do everything too. And I couldn't even enter that stupid school."
The wind blew our faces. The cars formed lines of red and yellow lights twenty floors below. He lit his second cigarette. I cut him some slack this time.
"But I worked hard. I did all I could. I ranked third at the graduation. My name was called, and she was so excited. I'm glad she was.
"There were six classes; A to F, and F was where the dumbest students went. I was at A. Out of almost two hundred and forty something students, I ranked number three. You think I got lucky?" His eyes looked straight at me. "Nope. I was aiming for first. It was pure hard work." He blew his smoke.
"I went to the same high school she went to, and though my marks were good," -- dad's high school scores ranked seventh best in the regency --- "the best university in the nation was out of the question. All I had in mind was doing my deed, entering that crappy university for your grandmother."
I had a lot of questions that night. I mean, my dad was the chief editor of a national newspaper. He got a PhD in investigative journalism from Columbia University. He can't have gone to a crappy university, it just didn't make sense. But I couldn't say a word. I was frozen speechless. I figured he would have to get to the point soon.
It was a long two minutes of silence. He binned his cigarette butt and started off again. "Isn't this a good life?" he asked. I nodded. "This is what I've always wanted; big screen TV, cupboard full of mi goreng. Do you have a good life?"
"Yeah, of course," I guess that's what I said, faintly, perhaps unheard.
When I was in the fifth grade, I bought my own guitar. It cost twenty nine thousand rupiah. It was the worse guitar ever. It was like a canoe with strings. I knew the neck was the problem the moment I saw it."
"Twenty nine thousand rupiah?" I asked.
"Yeah, I mean what kind of guitar sold at twenty nine thousand rupiah? Even back then, twenty nine thousand was cheap, you know?"
"Dad, it's always cheap. Twenty nine thousand rupiah is never expensive!" We laughed.
"Well that's where you got it wrong. I got one hundred rupiah for school every day, nothing more, nothing less. Now precisely how long do you think it took me to save all those coins and get my own twenty nine thousand rupiah?" His eyes were lively.
"Two hundred and ninety days, even more," he said, answering his own question and pausing. "That green electric guitar of yours, how long did you save your pocket money for that one?" he asked.
It was a trick question. Smarty pants. "Okay, it's yours, I got it for you." He laughed.
At the time I thought I knew where he was going with all this. That my life was easy, his was hard, that I should have got good grades and all that stuff. I said to myself "Go ahead dad, make your speech."
"I want to be proud of you, you know? I want to be taken to your office one day, have a chat with your boss, tell him to stop praising my son and just promote the damn kid for the heck of it. Damn! You could always be that guy on TV, you know. Inventing revolutionary methods of squeezing milk out of cow or something, I mean you're my son!
"You're expected to do things, not by other people, but by me. Boy, I'm waiting to see great things out of you!" He lit his third cigarette. It was like the climax, or at least for me. I was wrong.
"I mean you're me. I want you to hear the music that I hear. I want you to see all the great movies I've seen, respect my comic book collections like I did. I want you to listen as I listen.
"Love your own music. Your video games, love them. Have dreams and do whatever you can to achieve them. All you need is this."
He pointed at his head.
"Love? You have love, everywhere. Did I not give you love?"
"Of course you give me love dad, a lot of it," I abruptly answered, reflecting I guess.
"Then what are you waiting for? Motivation? Am I not enough of a motivation?" he said. Our eyes met.
Thinking of that night now, I think that was the climax. We didn't say a word after that. I thought it was my time to say something, but my mind was just blank.
"Don't doubt me dad," I said. He looked at me with his childlike face and smile. "Never," he said.
My dad died eight months ago. I've had four jobs so far. And I took my dad to every office I've had, introducing him to my colleagues. I stayed as long as I could everyday during his three month hospital treatment for lung cancer, especially before and after chemo.
And he was always so lively, drawing muscled men with tights and giving them tasteless superhero names, unaware of his presence as hero, for me.
It was June 28. I was arranging his clothes when he asked me to take him around the hospital in a wrecked wheelchair. The sky was gray after the rain and we were strolling quietly through a small path in the hospital's park. We stopped at a bench under a tree facing the kid's section, and decided to watch the view.
"You're right, you know?" he said faintly after a whole bunch of me talking nonsense about how cheap a cup of coffee should be.
"What?" I answered.
"Smoking does kill eventually," he said.
"No, it won't, nothing kills you dad."
He smiled.
"You're a good son, I raised you good. I'm proud of myself. But more than that is the pride of having you as my son, every, single, day." He enunciated the words, making a small punch with his right arm to my left thigh on the last three words.
"You're okay." His eyes stared right into mine.
He passed three days later at the age of 56. And I cried for three days straight. I love him. He meant everything to me.
-the end-
for mom
I finally got this short story published, with the illustration sketched out by myself ha ha!
It's basically not about my dad, but about me being a dad in the future. There's no talk of wife, I adopted the child, and Calvin was his name (taken from Calvin and Hobbes, what else)
It's a hard task being a dad, and I have no idea how hard it is.
I hope the short story describes .
