PA: AN ESSAY

I have grown estranged from my father. I don’t know how or when it started to happen, but he has since become a stranger.

When I was one or two years old, Pa used to record me dancing. I watch those videos now and I see myself smiling, happy. I can’t see Pa’s face but I have a feeling he was smiling too. When I was five or six, Pa and I made fried rice together on weekends or after school. I remember him asking me to get some white pepper and I ran to him with a piece of white paper, mishearing his accent when he spoke English. When I was six or seven years old, my sister and I used to play Scrabble with Pa. My sister and I used to sit on the carpet in the living room at night and play with him. I rediscovered our Scrabble board, recently, and saw our old scoreboards. Pa always scored the highest. When I was twelve or thirteen, Pa used to talk to me in the car on the way back from school. All I had to do was ask a single question and he would go on and on, answering elaborately. We all used to joke about how he could never stop talking, my mother, sister, and me. Pa would take the blow and we’d all laugh together, as one.

I’m seventeen now, eighteen soon and I wish I could say that it’s still like that now. But it’s not. I’m not even sure what’s happened between us. I try to think back to when he used to father me, and I can’t really remember when it all went dry.

We don’t talk much anymore. I could probably count the number of words we say to each other on one hand. He sometimes manages to make comments on my marks and school and his plans for my future. We don't normally go beyond there. I look at other dads, in real life or on television, and they seem to know if their children are happy or sad or scared. Their dads ask if they’re okay and if they can do anything for them. I know I shouldn’t compare but I can’t help but notice that my father never asks me if I’m okay. I don’t even think he knows if I’m not.

When I observe the way he lives, it seems as though he’s living on his own. I often wonder, if my sister and I were to leave home, would he feel any different? Would he live life the same way he does now? Would he feel a sense of absence at all?

Perhaps it’s me. I know that I’m partly to blame here. I know that I should reach out more. I always seem to think that I don’t try hard enough to be a good daughter. Maybe he has a different way of showing love, a way that I don’t understand.

I’m afraid to be like him but as years go by, I see my father more and more in myself. The jazz music I used to loathe hearing him play every morning has now become a part of my morning ritual. I never imagined the soundtrack of my early adulthood consisting of Cedar Walton or Nat King Cole. I remember getting annoyed whenever he used to leave crumpled up tissues in his pockets and put them in the wash. The tissues would get wet in the machine and would disperse throughout the cycle, peppering lint on every article of clothing being washed that day. When I took out the wash two weeks ago, I found a pen and what used to be a receipt wedged in the pocket of my trousers. I’m going to turn into him, I thought, brushing the remnants of wet paper from my pockets.

I forget that Pa is a person sometimes. I forget that he had a life before me, before my sister, before Ma. The first time I saw him as a person was when his younger brother passed away. He didn’t know how to emote, looking the most tired he had ever been in his entire life.

My uncle, Om Aji, had kidney failure. Everyone in the family says that the cause of his illness was from all of the over-the-counter pills he would take for his acid reflux. My parents think his illness stemmed from the undiagnosed depressive disorder he had.

“Maybe we gave him a hard time,” Pa said. “Maybe we should have given him more encouragement.” I could hear his voice shaking as he hugged me and my sister the day we found out Om Aji died. I had never seen him cry.

I couldn’t see my father in the same way after that day. Where I used to see frustration towards the negligence he showed me, I now see a reciprocation of what his surroundings had shown him; what he grew up with. We are merely a projection of what we have received in life and the worst we see in other people are traits we secretly hate most about ourselves.

I would talk to my mother about these things, about why Pa is the way he is. She would stay quiet, undefensive. Truth is, I think she saw what I saw but I don’t think she had the response I was looking for. Even if she did, I don’t think she’d have the heart to tell me. At the time, all I wanted were answers. All I wanted were finite conclusions to why my father is the way he is. Just when you think the answers are within reach, they slip away, faster than a fleeting moment.

It was only when life began to move on that I realized that I was making the mistake. I saw my father as someone else from somewhere else. Someone I wanted but didn’t need. Try as I might to put my father through a fun-loving, optimistic, TV-dad cookie cutter, he simply will not fit. He is not the dad that brings Mum breakfast in bed. He is not the dad who will sit on the bleachers and scream your name for a sport that you cannot play but won’t admit defeat to. He is not Mr Rogers. He is not Dad or Daddy, he is Pa. Pa is quiet in the way he cares for you. Pa listens, even when it seems like he’s the only one talking. Pa pushes you because he knows how much you can take. Pa will pick you up from school, an hour after the school bell rings. Pa will come home from work at 6am with a plastic bag full of ice cream. Pa will beat you at Scrabble. Pa will talk to you endlessly in the car. Pa will make you fried rice, so long as you pass the white pepper.

Brianna Munanto is an aspiring writer studying a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Creative Writing at Curtin University, Western Australia. Outside of her studies, she works as a chef and develops recipes rooted in her Indonesian heritage through her Instagram. Brianna resides in Perth, Western Australia. @briannasidra @terasiterrace