Ba-ba

Kai adores Bill. I mean, he "pops-awake-from-deep-sleep-and-immediately-starts-looking-for-him-as-soon-as-he-hears-the-faintest-noise-Bill-makes" adores his daddy. He greets daddy with a big smile and a "Hey" in the morning. When Bill comes home, he gets so excited he looks as if he could explode if Bill waited too long to pick him up. While he waits for Bill to come to him, he slowly lets out this high pitch hum that explodes into an enthusiastic "ha" (sometimes it sounds like a "hi") when Bill picks him up. He reaches out for daddy. He jumps up and down for daddy. He pokes his head out as far as he can to track daddy around the house.

Recently, I started to suspect that Kai has made the connection and knows that Bill is "ba-ba" ("daddy in Chinese) because he lights up when he hears the word "ba-ba"... the same way when he sees his daddy.

Like I said, Kai adores his daddy.

Last week, my mom came to play with Kai and she saw how much Kai loves his father. She was surprised because she had never seen it before. In fact, she was so surprised that she told me how surprised she was again yesterday.

"I was so surprised to see how excited Kai was when he saw Bill the other day. He really loves his father!!" my mom said.

I laughed. "It's not that big of a deal, mom. Kids love their parents. It's normal."

My mom smiled and looked thoughtful for a brief moment, and she said, "I guess I was so surprised because I've never seen you that happy with your father..."

My parents filed for divorce when I was 4. My dad left home, and my grandmother kicked my mom out ('cause she "was no longer family"). I lived with my paternal grandparents. My dad would come home on major holidays, usually only for dinner. Because of his constant absence, my memories of father-daughter time are quite limited. However, I was quite fond of my father when I was little.

I remember rushing through the house to greet him when I heard my dad whistling my name as he came up the stairs. I remember the wrestling matches and tickle fights. I remember in elementary school lying on the couch with my head on his lap as he stroke and untangled my hair. I remember in high school being in the passenger's seat listening to my dad talk about what defines a good driver is not what he can do with his car but how he handles his car in the times that matter. I remember going shopping for clothes with dad and he told me that I looked best in jeans, not in skirts. There began my tomboy phase in junior high. And because of what he said, I remember how embarrassed and awkward I felt 6 years later, when I was doing the cat walk while crossing the street with my best friend in the night-life center of Taipei in mini skirts and high heels and then I saw my dad walking toward us from the other side of the street. I wished there was a hole on the ground. When we crossed paths in the middle of the street, all my dad said was, "Yes, you've got nice legs. That's why you look best in jeans."

Granted, each of these was an isolated event on its own and each meant probably a couple of hours I spent with my dad. After grandpa died, dad came home even more infrequently, and he seemed to completely dropped out of my life when I reached 18.

The next time I saw my dad was at my UBC graduation ceremony. My mom was there, too, but they didn't talk to each other at all. I didn't have much time to talk to my dad before the ceremony, and he left with his friend almost immediately after. What I will always remember, however, is my dad telling me how he took the Seabus from North Van and spent a day wander around downtown by himself. Some kid bummed a cigarette from him, and he ended up sitting on the sidewalk with that kid and somehow, with almost no English, he got the story about why the kid was on the street. A 60-year-old Taiwanese ex-military dude with no English having a smoke and talking solely in body language with a run-away on the sidewalk of Robson Street in downtown Vancouver... Somehow I wasn't surprised. It was just the kind of things my dad would do.

My dad and I talked on the phone quite often when I was in Vancouver. Sometimes he'd just call to ask if I was warm enough 'cause "I saw it on TV that it's snowing in Vancouver. Very unusual." When I laughed and asked how he knew it was unusual, he said proudly, "I've done my research" and started listing the population, average temperatures, and major languages in Vancouver. I got the feeling that he was happy that I was in North America. He always told me to travel. "Go to Montreal. I saw it online that it's a very artsy place. You'll like it. Hey, you should learn some French now." When I told him I was working two jobs one summer, he said, "Why don't you take 2 weeks before school starts and travel across Canada, or the United States? Go see how people in the richest country in the world live their lives."

It was then I understood truly what "living vicariously" meant.

In everyone's eyes, my dad is a rebellious son, an irresponsible husband, and an absent father. However, as I'm now able to see him not as my father but a man, I can't help but think maybe my dad never wanted a family but ended up getting married because it was the right thing to do in this culture at that time. We're all the products of our time, aren't we?

I may not adore my father like Kai does his daddy, but I'm okay with the fact that my father is a slightly eccentric and a loner kind of a guy. That's the only ba-ba I've ever known, and frankly, I think it'd be weird if we try to be anything else.