The dinner table clangs with four dishes and one soup, the perfect Chinese dinner. The children are quiet, as we're supposed to be, while my parents chatter about the summer and the upcoming church retreat. They chew a little, talk a little, and scoop more rice into small plastic bowls. They complain about the air conditioning, but I know their true focus is on the younger children, more specifically, me.
"These kids have never been through—" my dad asks my mom a specific Chinese phrase even I haven't heard of.
She responds, half-way through swallowing, with, "Boy scouts. But harder."
"Yes, like boy scouts." My dad turns to me, pointing his chop sticks like little pincers. "Except we had to walk for hours every day. It was 6 hours I think." He looks at my mom for confirmation. She's busy transferring laddles of soup into her bowl. Then she nods. He continues. "And we were younger than you. We were about 14 years old.
"I remember walking down in the country side. There were lines of children, some with shoes, some with sandals, none of them fat like you. We had-we had—little bags in the front for food, little ones in the back for water; sleeping bags on the back, and if we were lucky, hats from our parents. It was always hot. And when it wasn't, it was rainy. They wanted to make us into—" he asks my mom another word in Chinese.
She smiles sardonically, and looks at me. "They call it 'iron feet'. They want us have 'iron feet' after 3 months are done." She pretends I understand, and nods to my father to continue.
Helplessly, I watch my father resume his story.
"I remember the first day—we had water bubbles on our feet—"
"You mean blisters." I interrupt, standing up because I'm done with dinner. He gives me an appraising look.
"Yes, blisters. And at night, we had to pop them with little nails—so that we could walk tomorrow. Every day, it was walking for kilo-meters. And then at night, we were told to sleep there on 干草—hay—even though there many animals all around.
"Sometimes we walk through 沼泽里—" he glances at my mom, but then turns away. "—a swamp. There were many 水蛭, and 水蛇—water snake. There is no feeling like stepping on a water snake. And then we wake up and same thing again. Every day like this for two weeks. Then we work on farm for three months.”
My dad is silent for a moment. He is too busy reminiscing to notice that I’ve already washed all the dishes and packed all the leftover food into the refrigerator. He has this weird grin on his face; as if talking about such horrid experiences gives him superiority.
And when he continues talking, he begins talking in rapid Chinese. He tells me how he once fished for chickens on top of a farm roof, and how he once found rats in the hay he slept on. He tells me how he was kept a grade back, how my mother never went to high school, how he had to study underneath half-working, dim "street lamps" in order to catch up that last grade. He tells me about how the Cultural Revolution ravaged his life; he had never seen a whole chicken egg before moving to Shanghai, near the end of the Cultural Revolution. He continues on and on, how as a child, younger than me, he has gone through more hardship and more experiences than I ever will.
When he's finished, he gazes at me intently, and I know what he is getting at. This entire summer, I have been too lax, and too lazy. He doesn't need to tell me to work harder; he knows that I know. He's done this many times before. Only, this time, I know it is not just to shame me about all the adversity he had to face in order to get me where I am. It is not only to tell me to work harder; it's to remind me of my disappearing childhood.
"But this happened so long ago." he finishes, with a sigh. "And I've told you this so many times before. How long before you leave the house and live on your own? Hopefully by then you'll understand that a person's greatest enjoyment is in accomplishment."
He stands up, and without much care, dumps his dishes in the sink, and rinses them thoroughly, placing them on the drying rack. My mom has long since gone to another room, clickety-clacking on her laptop, while my sister has disappeared into her room. I hear the thump-thump-thump of my father climbing the stairsteps, and then I hear him close the door to his office.
The kitchen table is empty, and I'm the only one sitting there. The food is all gone, and the air is all silent, except for the erratic AC. My dad has finished his research involving math and probability. My sister has finished her first story. My mom has finished several projects for her workplace. While I sit here, alone.
And I can't help but think I've wasted my summer.
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