Untitled I

It was Father who introduced me to cinema, smoking and booze.

He was a quiet person, he didn't talk much in the family. I never really knew my father, not that well anyway. Sartre was right, it was a spiritual snobbery to think that one can be happy without money. Father was neither a snob nor a happy person.

Father liked to smoke somewhat. After dinner, I would light his Viceroy and he would quietly drag and puff under the greenish fluorescent tubes. Grandma was a smoker too. It was my job to run to the neighborhood store to buy them Viceroys. And in the summer, a can of cold beer to go with dinner. One time, I put one of his San Miguel's in the freezer longer than it's necessary, and it came out all frozen and bloated. He was pretty mad. He wasn't big or tall or anything, but I certainly didn't want to see him mad. Though he wasn't the primary punisher in the household, but he certainly could and did step up if needed to. One time he hit me with a leather belt when I was horsing around in bed. He must have a bad day. He could have waited for the beer to thaw and grabbed another one but he just wanted to take that opportunity to blow off some steam. So he was putting the frozen beer to the kerosene burner. I didn't remember the can blowing up but it wasn't pretty.

By and large, Father loved me, maybe not in a modern or contemporary kind of way. Though we seldom really sat down and talked. Maye except twice. Once on our way to a wedding banquet in a bus where Father mentioned how bad he felt he treated or shortchanged Mom. The other time was in a taxi ride from Kai Tak airport.

There wasn't much going on in the household. Life was boring and uneventful except for the perennial complaints between Mom and Grandma and quibbles among us children.

The only quality time I had with Father was going to the movies. I didn't remember if that was something I looked forward to but it certainly beat sitting at home doing nothing at all. Back then there weren't movies specifically catered for children, even if there was, I doubt father would take me to those. It was always those Mandarin dialog Wuxia features that we went to see. The fight scenes were incredulous brutal, gut spilling out, limbs and heads flying everywhere. Those were pre-Jackie Chan Shaw Brothers. Father never liked fist fight, he was a die-hard sword fight kind of guy.

... to be continued