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Father’s day

Admittedly Father’s day is a very commercialized affair. Well to our highly cinapek oriented family, that is. Our day started off with the commemoration of Duan Wu Jie (Dragon Boat Festival) which falls on the 5th day of the 5th month of the chinese lunar calendar. In fact as I am typing this, I’m not too sure what we’re going to do for Father’s day. A meal outside? Too common. A cake? Mom complains its fattening. A card? It gets discarded during the annual spring cleaning pre-CNY.

So I decided to write. I hardly write about my dad simply because, him being an average Asian Chinese dad, he keeps to himself most of the time. The weathered shoulders, the receding hairline, the protruding pot belly are all signs of age which have caught up with him throughout these years.

Both my sister and I were close to our father as kids. Guess its true when they say that little girls will always have a special place in their daddy’s hearts. However as we grow older, we have our own set of problems, which personally, we’d like to deal with in our own time rather than pour all out to our parents.

Dad’ always the quiet one, playing the role of a supportive husband, cementing the policies and rules that the CM in my house sets out (no prizes for guessing who wears the pants in the house). He gets the groceries, replenishes household items and occassionally gets an itch for planting fruits and herbs.

He loves cooking (although I really can’t vouch for the delectable quality), and nothing pleases him more than a hearty dish of chicken cooked in bungkang leaves. If I were to associate dad with a familiar smell, it has got to be the pungent aroma of bungkang leaves.

Both he and my mom gave up luxuries for many years in order to see me and my brother through our tertiary education. That old Nissan Sunny which gives him problems every now and then, has served him faithfully for almost 15 years.

Dad is a reminder to me of the little things in life which I always take for granted- the hard boiled eggs on the table every morning, when I finally haul my lazy arse out of bed with dishevelled hair and puffy eyes, soup of the day in the stainless steel pot, steaming fragrant native rice cooking in the rice cooker (will blog about the purple coloured rice another day), a box of chicken essence to keep me feeling energised during the “DaYima” monthly visits, etc.

Not a man of emotions, the only time I ever saw Dad cry, was during my grandfather’s funeral many many years ago. I remember when he sent me off at the airport in 2000, I was in tears as I said goodbye at the airport. He was sad, but he kept his emotions in check.

I suppose, to put it in my cousin’s words– “Its a Luk Feng thing.”

Happy Father’s Day, pa.Thanks for everything.