The Days I’ll Always Remember

The Days I’ll Always Remember

March 4, 2008

公公 sat on the bench in the foyer, trying to get his shoes on.  I took off my mittens, put them in my pocket and bent down to help him.  I took the shoe out of his fumbling fingers and brought it to his foot.  I helped him push his foot in and then stood up to help him up.   We walked out of my uncle’s house to our car.  I opened the back door and helped him in, making sure he had his seatbelt on and then closed the door.  Then I went back in the house to get 婆婆 and do the same thing over again.

With my grandparents and my mom squished in the back, and my dad sitting in the passenger seat, I turned on the ignition and set off to Tako Sushi restaurant. 

“Wow, Karen is such a big girl now,” 公公 said, as I stopped at the red light.  “All grown up and now she’s driving us around.”

I stopped at the restaurant door and let my grandparents off first.  Then I parked the car and headed inside.  I slipped into the empty seat next to my grandpa.

“公公, what are you ordering?” I asked.  I closed my menu and putting it in the pile at my side.

“Hmmm,” he murmured.  His eyes scanned the glossy pages carefully.  I took the menu from him and turned the page.

“公公, that’s the wrong page.  That’s the lunch menu.  We’re eating dinner.”

He nodded and pointed at #23, the Toronto special.

I shook my head and pointed at #26, Montreal.  “公公, 23 is just teriyaki chicken.  Why not get chicken and salmon?  You like salmon.”

He nodded again and looked up.  “Yes yes.  Ah Karen, you really know what 公公 likes.”

I smiled weakly, and took my chopsticks out of the paper sleeve and broke it.  I took 公公’s and did the same.

I drank my miso soup, took out my CCT textbook out from my bag and flipped through the pages.

“Ohhhh, so hard working ahh… do you have school tomorrow?” he asked.  He shelled green peas in his bowl and popped them in his mouth.

“No 公公, it’s Christmas break.  There’s no school.”

“Oh.  So Jeanette has no school too?”

“Mhmm,” I agreed absentmindedly, flipping to Chapter 14, page 459.

 “So you have to think about which university you want to attend this year, right?”

 “公公, I’m already in university.”

“Really?  Oh yes… yes.”

“UT?  The campus near home.”

“Oh yes, Mississauga. You are very smart to get into such a good school.  Toronto is such a well known school.  Even I knew about it when I lived in Hong Kong.”

“Mhmm.”

 “Oh Karen.  公公 loves you and Jeanette very much.  You two are such good girls.  You two work so hard and are so smart.”

“Mhmm, we love you too 公公.”  My response felt so automatic.  It’d be with more feeling if he didn’t say the same thing every time we visited.  There are only so many reactions to ‘I love you grandchild’.

“That’s why we like to take you two grandchildren on vacation,” he said.  The ‘we’ referred to my grandma who disappeared for the washroom ten minutes ago. “I’m sure most of your friends haven’t gone to St. Kitts before.”

“Yup, we’re really lucky our grandparents love us so much.”

“And then we took you to San Francisco with us a few years ago.”

“Mhmm.”

“Oh.  And that’s the time you got hurt,” he said with a chuckle.

I laugh weakly and look at my right knee which was covered by three fading scars. “Uh huh…”

“Last summer your family went to Hong Kong, right?”

“That’s right 公公.”  My parents looked at me over their bowls of soup and laughed.  We all knew what was coming next.

“And you went to Japan too?  Did you know I used to live in Japan?”

I rolled my eyes.  This was the same conversation we had every single time I talked to him.  And that was at least two times a week on the phone ever since we had returned from our vacation in Hong Kong in August.  And every time I visited him in Scarborough.

“Yes 公公, I know.  You told me before,” I said.

“Oh yes, I lived there for work.  I hated it there because of what the Japanese did to the Chinese.”  He said, referring to the Nanking Massacre that occurred during World War II.  “I hated it so much that I refused to learn the language, even though it was so easy to learn.  All I could say was ‘ohayoo gozaimasu’ which means good morning and ‘nihongo wa wakarimasen’, every time someone would try to ask me for directions because it means I don’t know Japanese.”

“公公, you are so silly.  If you had learned, you could have taught us.  Jeanette likes to watch Japanese cartoons, you could have taught her.”

“The Japanese were really terrible in China.  When I was walking home from school, I would avoid taking the shortcut because the Japanese guards were stationed there.  I would go the long way, and walk an hour longer just so I wouldn’t have to bow to them.  Once I didn’t want to bow to them and the guard stopped me and put a gun to my head, threatening to shoot me if I didn’t bow.  So I said I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

I sighed. “Ah 公公, you’re lucky they didn’t kill you.  You shouldn’t have been so rebellious.”

“No, I had to disobey them.  I couldn’t let them scare me.”

“Ahh, you were so brave 公公,” I said. I flipped to the back of the textbook for a definition.  Hypodermic needle theory.

“And they put the gun to my head!”

“You already said that.”

“Oh yes… yes…” he said, trailing off in thought.

The waiter returned with the Montreal meal.  I pointed at 公公’s setting and they put it in front of him.  He snapped out of it and picked up his chopsticks.  I continued to read, savoring the few minutes of silence I had.

 

I miss you.

 

 

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