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My dad was a bit of a collector. He believed that everything could be kept for something - tax purposes, writing, and memories especially. I'm going through drawers and finding things I don't even remember, but there I am. My cousin Xiaolei was here, and she was with me to find photographs of her father and mine together alongside letters from when they corresponded to catch up. There was one when I was little and she told me how adorable I looked, that my dad was proud of me, and he knew I had potential as a writer if I could just breathe and let be. Then she pointed out who the woman was standing beside me, my aunt that's my dad's sister's niece's something or other that I totally got lost in because our relatives are several, spread over continents and languages. Recently, my cousin Ming-Ming moved to Sweden because of marriage. Our best moment was when she and I looked at a photograph from decades ago, and I pointed out dad because he's the fair-skinned of the lot; Xiaolei said it wasn't, and then looked again and omg, yes it was!
I found notes from 1987, when we traveled from Columbus to Chicago to LA to Tokyo to Singapore to Jakarta to Surabuya to Medan and back. Records from AAA and plane tickets, and I LOVE plane tickets, stamps, all things travel. I think they're lovely little tokens that remind us more than pictures can sometimes. And newspaper clippings on the most efficient way to get to Singapore because it was always our first stop. Then there's my grandmother's obit. from forever ago with my name in a newspaper in Indonesia, I think? And the Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong.
. . . now I'm collecting. I laughed earlier because my mom said it's a good thing we have a big car, and I told her that yeah, we do, but instead the trunk is a huge stereo. Too bad, I'd take the whole office if I could. I should take pictures of it. I've mentioned before that my dad's a sociology prof as well as a textbook author, so there's a lot of books by him (I found a 1st ed. from the 1960s) on various topics, including criminology at one point.
Good memories. I miss his handwriting, the chats, and I want to yell at him and mom for not telling me sooner. I knew he was sick, his travels abroad left him ill, and he's old, but I would've done more - no, that's a lie. There wasn't more that I could do, and he knew that, and as I've told our relatives, he didn't want to worry us. He wanted to be remembered as the strong, wonderful, supportive man he'll always be.
I found notes from 1987, when we traveled from Columbus to Chicago to LA to Tokyo to Singapore to Jakarta to Surabuya to Medan and back. Records from AAA and plane tickets, and I LOVE plane tickets, stamps, all things travel. I think they're lovely little tokens that remind us more than pictures can sometimes. And newspaper clippings on the most efficient way to get to Singapore because it was always our first stop. Then there's my grandmother's obit. from forever ago with my name in a newspaper in Indonesia, I think? And the Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong.
. . . now I'm collecting. I laughed earlier because my mom said it's a good thing we have a big car, and I told her that yeah, we do, but instead the trunk is a huge stereo. Too bad, I'd take the whole office if I could. I should take pictures of it. I've mentioned before that my dad's a sociology prof as well as a textbook author, so there's a lot of books by him (I found a 1st ed. from the 1960s) on various topics, including criminology at one point.
Good memories. I miss his handwriting, the chats, and I want to yell at him and mom for not telling me sooner. I knew he was sick, his travels abroad left him ill, and he's old, but I would've done more - no, that's a lie. There wasn't more that I could do, and he knew that, and as I've told our relatives, he didn't want to worry us. He wanted to be remembered as the strong, wonderful, supportive man he'll always be.
