Sunday, April 08, 2007

My father, the fruiterer

My father's a grumpy man and a rather formidable one at that. On top of that, he's kinda deaf. Actually, very deaf. And very gruff. So, it's hard to talk to him. On so many levels. But he likes having us around even if he doesn't hear us all that much. As a result, we eat dinner as a family once a week and it's quite a logistical exercise cos it's 11 of us plus an infant.

Anyway, occasionally, my father surprises us. The siblings all had issues with him as we were growing up because he wasn't exactly the easiest person to live with. But then again, we've grown up since and we see him for what he is. An imperfect man trying his darndest to be a good father.

And at the crux of it, he loves us to death and shows it in his own way, like doing this or what he did tonight which involved bags of fruit. According to my mother, every Sunday, he must have the car and he must go out and buy fruit. My father loves fruit, by the way. And today, he walked into the restaurant and announced to his 2 married children not to leave without taking fruit from him. Which was cool by me since I like fruit and my theory is that one can never have enough fruit.

I find out only after he's left that he had gone out to buy enough fruit to painstakingly divide fairly into 3 portions- and these were 3 large portions because I came home with like 4 mangoes and 10 mangosteen! One for me, one for my brother's family and one for them at home. It touched me in a big way even though it wasn't all that big a gesture- afterall, an onlooker would say that it was just fruit. But it proves my point; he always thinks of us. A lot of what he does or what he enjoys doing revolves around us. And he gets a big kick out of doing that and all he wants in return is a loud word of thanks and acknowledgement that he's still needed. I'm guessing, that's what a lot of our parents want from us, even though some have the knack of pressing all the right buttons and irritating the heck out of us.

But at the end of the day, I think it's cool what my dad did. It's not a lot that he asks for and it's not something I'm going to withhold and it's really not just because I like fruit.

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 21:26

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