Englam.Net

Today, August 8th, is celebrated as Father’s Day widely here in Taiwan. In the USA, it is the second Sunday of June for the fathers, like the second sunday for the mothers. The 8th month’s 8th day, å…«å…« in short, is pronounced Pa Pa (or otherwise Ba Ba), hard p sound, it rhymes with 爸爸 Pa Pa, so it is made to be Fathers’ Day here. Papers are full of fathers’ stories. It happens that pronounciations in Taiwanese and Chinese are different with B and P. In Taiwanese, P has two sounds, one hard, and another soft. The Chinese has no Taiwanese B sound which is like Japanese ba, so, Ba Ba would sound like refering to an old woman, not father.

I was recalling my parents. Both of them passed away before their 40es almost 3 years apart. My mother, a very beautiful lady, clothed and fed us and she was a discipliner. She would chase after my sister and little brothers with a whip. But she stopped using a whip with me after I asked her to tell me what’s wrong instead of hitting when I was 8. My father was different. He let my mother with a whip but himself would preside only there were cases of graver matters bought to his attetion. With me, he would take ME around on a bicycles, talking and commenting. He would ask me to help him build chicken coops and keep records for each productive hen. Once in the building process, I wanted to smash a toad with a big stone because I was terrorized by it, Father sternly stopped me and told whats good about toads. There were many like teachings. He tought me how to hatch chicks with a hatching device and differentiate their sexes. My fondness of orchids is a rub-off from him. He was a talented person with many interests. He was a good humorous and eloquent preacher. He played cornet and oboe and started and led several church bands. There is one such bands which is still active in southern Taiwan (from which I received an very old oboe from my father’s time as a memento). He was a tennis player and a good swimmer. He saved a drowning classmate from seminary when they went picknicing by the sea and after they became like-brothers. I still remember how he taught me to float and breath and frog. There were so much to learn yet but he passed away when I was 14. My mother died 3 years later. As the eldest, I was forced to be brave and take responsibility for my family with youger siblings, emulating my father wanted not to fail him. I am 77 now, but I still miss my father very much, especially around this time here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 10:52 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.