Chapter 10: The Boy Who Taught Me Many Things
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I rarely talk to people about my father.
Perhaps nobody would believe it even if I confessed, but the last time I actually met my father was before I got married. I asked him whether he wanted to attend my wedding, and he awkwardly rubbed his hands together before rejecting me gently.
When I was four, Dad had an affair. As a result, my mum and dad divorced, with custody of both Guan Chao and I being awarded to my mum. After morphing into a single parent household, the most immediate effect that I felt was that we became poor. Dad quickly remarried, and the new wife was extremely strict with him. Thus, when the court adjudged that he had to give us 85 dollars every month for maintenance, he truly gave us only a mere 85 dollars every single month.
That period of time was extremely difficult for us. Mum was jobless, but she had her pride – she wasn’t willing to return to her parents’ home, and simply raised both Guan Chao and I entirely by herself. Subsequently, she found a job helping people with minor tasks, such as folding paper boxes. As a result, the entire house was filled with stacks of low quality, bright yellow paper meant for the boxes. For every box that she completed, she could earn a single cent, and she had to complete ten thousand boxes within three days.
When I told Mr. F about these experiences, he was unable to believe his ears – in today’s day and age, how could there be jobs with wages rigged to the precise production levels? I told him that it was true, and that my mum relied entirely on such a job in order to send us to kindergarten and pre-school. At that time, not many children were enrolled in pre-school, and everybody thought that my mum was simply wasting her money. Despite such objections, my mum insisted on enrolling us in pre-school no matter how difficult it was for her, as she believed that her children could not be in a worse state when compared to other children. From that moment onwards, my personality transformed from a naughty child without a care in the world into an overly cautious kid with an inferiority complex.
According to my memory, there was a very long period of time during which my mum suffered tremendously. Every morning, she had to wake up at 4AM to deliver milk, only returning home at 7AM so as to prepare breakfast for me and Guan Chao. Subsequently, she would start preparing numerous lunch boxes at 10AM, and by 12 noon, she would proceed to use her pushcart to sell these lunches by the roadside. My mum did all these in an attempt to earn more money than she did previously, but we were still stranded in financial difficulties.
During that period of time, it was extremely common for parents to purchase all sorts of nutritious tonics for their children. There were innumerable advertisements shown on the television promoting the great taste of Lan Ping’s calcium solutions, often stirring in me a desire to give the solution a try. At that time, children from other homes were ‘lacking’ in calcium, iron and zinc – but when it came to Guan Chao and I, we would declare definitively without hesitation: Lacking money!
Nowadays, tears still spring to my eyes whenever I recall the hardship that we had suffered. If only my literary talent was much better, I’d be able to write another Dream of the Red Chamber.
This was part of the reason why I used to strongly believe that it would be impossible for Mr. F and I to end up together – the environments in which grew up were simply too different. He was like a prince; his life was free of troubles and difficulties, and he was akin to the sun, filled with positive energy. Conversely, I suffered from an inferiority complex, was often difficult to get along with, and weak. The moment the sunlight shone on me, I’d withdraw into my little shell.
Previously, Guan Chao asked me what was the biggest wish I had. I replied, saying that I wanted to marry somebody who was deeply and truly in love with me. He could be extremely poor, and he could be someone with no background. But I want to give my children a normal, complete family. I want my children to grow up in an environment filled with love. I do not want to place my children in a position where they have to fantasize about love by resorting to novels and dramas, and subsequently have these fantasies shattered in reality, resulting in them being filled with fear in the face of love. Because of the failure of my parents’ marriage, there was an extremely long period of time when I was unable to believe that there were relationships where both parties stayed loyal to each other throughout their entire life.
Subsequently, Mr. F related a small incident to me. When he was young, he had asked his father where he came from. His father didn’t respond by saying “I picked you up from the rubbish dump” like how other adults would; neither did he respond by saying “You dropped from my armpit.”
Instead, he told Mr. F, “You’re an angel from the heavens above. God has dispatched you here because he feels that your mother is the most beautiful woman on Earth, and would require your protection.”
“What about you?” Little F asked.
“Well, when you’ve grown older you would inevitably leave your mother. At that time, I, as your father, would be responsible for accompanying your mother until we’re both old and frail.”
This is the most romantic answer I’ve ever heard.
A few years ago, The Croods was screening in the cinemas. Mr. F and I decided to watch the movie. During the movie, there was a scene when the father, in an attempt to protect his family, threw his family members one by one onto the other side of the cliff. Seated amongst numerous young children in the cinema, I cried aloud to my utter embarrassment. The scene had struck an emotional chord with me. The love of a father is meant to be a gentle form of protection instinctively afforded to one’s children; it was something that many people naturally received since they were born, and yet, I had never experienced it in my entire lifetime.
When we stepped out of the cinema, Mr. F hugged me. Although he didn’t say a single word, I could feel the warmth from his embrace. The embrace was filled with gentleness and warmth, and encompassed both understanding and love.
When I was a teenager, I once childishly thought that I would never be able to love anyone, simply because I wasn’t even certain whether I had the capacity or ability to love. However, he told me that the ability to love was a natural gift that was innate to human nature, and that it was deeply rooted in the lives of every single person. No matter how pathetic and poor the surrounding soil is, the ability to love would never disappear – as long one chose to awaken it, one would discover that it would always be there.