Tag: Water Park

seeing daughter

My father often went off to see his daughter, my half-sister. My brother tried to see his son from a previous marriage every few years or so (coast to coast).

Now I found myself in the same situation: seeing my little girl whom I took back from the hospital 19 years ago. I am sure she is just as excited as I am.

We won’t miss a beat. Those DNA resemblance.

But the social setting is going to be different. It’s going to be a third place, neither home nor work place.

So I chose Ben and Jerry. At least, that’s where I used to take her. Small vanilla, in the cup.

I won’t feel awkward. I will feel like I am in touch with my old self.

We anchor ourselves in people and places, even as time moved on. In hard times, we got demoted to the lowest level of Maslow hierarchy of need: survival.

I know I live on through my daughters. They love life, and laugh with friends. Both of them show my outlook on life i.e. no matter what happens, don’t let the world rob you of your smile.

Face tomorrow with optimism and not self-sabotage.

Appreciate the past for what it is, but not letting legacy dictate the terms.

Never get yourself into a box (eventually, one might have to, but still with the option of having one’s ash scattered into the seven seas).

I don’t know what I will say to her today. Most of my lessons, she already learned. I cannot help her prevent heart-break or headache. Time and Tylenol will do.

I can only be there, surviving on my term and timetable. And I know, like her, I need a father who will mark the passage of time, by his unique reaction to stimuli. Some fathers reacted worse than others. Most try their best to live up to this parental role.

I am proud to say I have tried my best. I hope I have earned my stripes.

The rest, I leave to chance. After all, I was on my own at her age, facing extreme uncertainties and ill-fated future . I made it OK. And I know, I know, hers won’t be the same. It certainly is going to be better.

So, my meeting will punctuate not with a goodbye or good luck, but with congratulations for her sure and certain victories. I see them even before she comes to realize it. That’s what father is for (to mark historical context).

I bet my life that she will do me proud.

P.S. As of this edit, I see the younger one over Fourth of July. Same DNA. Same tempo.

She likes corn and peaches. We went to Water Park. Got sun burned but a warming heart.

Time will destroy yet heal at the same time. My mistakes, your lessons. I took her to visit my old house, old school and old neighborhood. I was at that age, at that tumultuous time. Presidents were assassinated, upheaval everywhere.

I was growing up real fast. Got a good dose of cold reality in my face and the future seemed less certain with each day.

How can you explain the Vietnam War to a ten-year-old? The past can only be understood from the future. At the present time, even with Presidential archives and declassified materials (on top of leaked Pentagon Papers), scholars still debate and dialogue.

Oh well. All eyes and ears are on the Egyptian scene and streets. The urge to splurge has moved somewhere else.

As long as ammunition is spent, and human lives wasted. Such is the affair of our world, our post Cold-War world.

Think of me, next Memorial Day

How much time do you have left?

Life expectancy average has been up, but individually, it’s an open question.

The question.

And this question should stand Maslow scale on its head i.e. if you knew you were going to die tonight,

would you be moving methodically up the Need pyramid? Or just go ahead to think that thought, say that word

and do that deed? Fearlessly.

Every week, I drove by Rapids, a water park, but haven’t once entered it.

The last time I tried jumping from the Devil‘s tower (vertical drop) I fainted for a few seconds.

Maybe this weekend, I will try again.

What’s your “water park”?

The chairman of Giant -Taiwanese bike Lord– has tried to do just that. He is going to repeat the national track on his 80;’s birthday. So did George Bush, the father, when he celebrated his birthday by jumping out of a plane, as he did in his youth.

A vet friend of mine, tall and friendly, used to karate-kick really high ( this was junior high when we used each other as human punch bags).

He went to war and came back injured.

We spent a lot of time catching up over the last decade after we had met again on the West coast.

Gone were the kicking. Just the sense of irony and humor left between us.

Imagined if he had died and never come back.

We wouldn’t have had those extra hours over coffee, computer and chicken rice (his 3 C’s).

Yesterday Gary Coleman, the star of Different Strokes and lately, Pay Day Advance spoke person died at the age of 42.

A doctor I know of the same name same age, died a few months back. He was adamant about checking other people’s cholesterol level. His cause of death: heart attack.

The hard part is to know when your time is up. The easy part is to choose how to live each day as if it were your last.

And since it’s my last blog, metaphorically, I hope to leave with you that sense of appreciation for life, as is.

We couldn’t negotiate our arrival, and our departure. So I guess, life as presented to us, is a non-negotiable package.

I am glad for the internet (1 and 0), music (7 notes) and the alphabet (hope and history rhyme).

And I appreciate those role models who exploit those infinite combination and permutation to show us what life was all about..  Their en-code have become my source code.

During those Kung-fu fever years (90% of our group took up Kung-fu of one form or another) I thought I could skip the law of gravity. I ended up with a broken arm.

And this weekend, perhaps, I will try to jump again.  But this time, it will be safe. It’s a water park, for God‘s sakes. And recession admission is buy one and get one free.

Someone has to watch and make sure I don’t faint again. A little attention for the living is much better than a ton for the dead.

Think of me next Memorial Day anyway regardless the outcome.

P.S. As of this edit, I have just gone back from my morning job. Passed by the noodle house. They were putting up funeral wreath. It was the noodle man’s last day. Perhaps I will think of him next Memorial Day. And the Syrian victims of Sarin.